


Short Term Shield

by shooting-stetsons (hulksmashmouth)



Category: Short Term 12, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Movie Fusion, Anorexia, Child Abuse, F/M, Foster Care, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Past Abuse, Past Child Abuse, Past Sexual Abuse, Suicide Attempt, mentions past abortion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-15
Updated: 2015-04-25
Packaged: 2018-03-23 03:16:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 6
Words: 46,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3752392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hulksmashmouth/pseuds/shooting-stetsons
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natasha Romanoff is the head line staff of a short-term foster care facility for troubled teenagers. When a new charge, Skye, is thrown into the mix, Natasha is forced to face her demons or let her life fall into chaos.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Monday

**Author's Note:**

> This is based on the 2013 independent film Short Term 12 by Daniel Destin Cretton. Though I've borrowed a lot from the film plot-wise, I feel like I've also added a lot of my own content. Regardless, I give all credit for inspiration to the movie.

“So, it starts with this kid, this huge, scary kid—” Clint started, just like he always started _the story_. 

“Who was neither very huge _nor_ scary,” Natasha laughed.

It was by far the most disgusting in his arsenal, and therefore his favorite to tell with the tougher kids and new staff members. Almost like some sick initiation. They were sitting at a picnic table outside B door. Natasha could feel the sun freckling the back of her neck as she smiled at the pavement. The newest staff member—her old classmate, Steve—was hovering near the door, uncertain if he was welcome in their little circle, until James tempted him closer with a Coke and an easy grin.

She tried to ignore how James’s shoulder brushed against hers as he reached out the drink. His skin was warm and slightly sticky. Clint went on: “He was kind of a problem kid. I’m not saying he was a _bad_ kid, just screwed up, meth-head parents, you know? Anyway, you _know_ we aren’t allowed to touch kids off the grounds?”

Clint looked at Steve, who shifted like a kid who hadn’t expected to be called on in class. “Yeah, I know,” he nodded. “It’s—the law, now. Because they’re underage. As long as they’re under our jurisdiction _here_ we can restrain them, but as soon as they leave the property they leave our jurisdiction.” He looked around for confirmation. James nodded with a thumbs-up. The Story continued.

“So the kid, he takes off, right?” he went on. "They _all_ try to take off at some point or another. But he gets off the grounds before I can catch him, the guy’s fast! But we’re encouraged to, you know, follow them, try to talk ‘em into coming back and cooling off for a while. So I followed him all the way to fuckin’ Brooklyn Park. But earlier in the day…”

He rounded on Natasha, who stifled another laugh and looked determinedly at the peeling paint on the side of the building.

“Earlier in the day, _someone_ convinced me to eat a fuck-ton of Armenian food for lunch, and Armenian food _apparently_ gives me the shits like nobody’s business. I had no idea, never had the stuff before, but it was rough. I follow this kid onto the subway, and this is when things start to get hairy…”

Natasha knew this story like the back of her hand, smiling faintly and looking away until the roar of laughter signaled that Clint got to the part where he shit himself on the subway. James and Sam looked ready to shit in their own right, while Steve was blushing crimson and chuckling under his breath. “So—you got him to come back though, right?”

“Yeah, yeah, I got him back,” nodded Clint, thumbing amused tears from his eyes. “Under the arrangement that he could tell whoever he damn pleased that I was so scared of getting my ass beat I shit myself. It’s a legend passed down through the halls of this fine establishment. Think it even got back to my fosters. I don’t mind; makes the kids underestimate me.”

Before she had a chance to cut in with her own side of the story, "Okay, _first of all_ —" the facility alarms started blaring and they all shot out of their spots around the picnic table. The nearest door sprang open and out tumbled a scrawny, curly haired boy wearing nothing but a pair of blue boxer briefs, making a break for the boundary and screaming at the top of his lungs. Natasha was bounding after him before her brain even had a chance to process the sight. “Lee!”

“Don’t let him off the grounds!” barked Sam as they shot after him. The boy was small and not very fast, so it didn’t take long before Natasha and James caught up. They grasped him by the arms and held until his own momentum brought him crashing to the crunchy brown grass. When they went down Natasha's ass hit the ground like the butt of a Slinky, shock rolling up her spine, and all at once she had to swallow a foul mouthful of bile.

Natasha never failed to feel impressed when she watched James wrestle kids down with one arm amputated above the elbow, barely breaking a sweat as he helped contain the squirming teen. “Take a breath and cool off, Lee,” she demanded between careful breaths, no room for negotiation. They had to keep him pinned until he ran out of strength and stopped struggling. It always _felt_ longer than it lasted, especially with Leopold Fitz, who preferred to be called Lee. He’d been with them for two months and already threw four temper tantrums like this before. Glued to his best friend and his toys, the boy would never really escape, but when something set him off he was off like a rocket. It was almost like a game to him. He was strong enough to break her arm and get the hell out of Dodge whenever he got too worked up; even then Natasha felt his muscles tensing, ready to spring free.

“Come on, Lee,” she repeated. “Let’s go inside and talk.”

After another few seconds the boy slumped and nodded in defeat. He stood up of his own will and walked back to the building, head hanging low with shame. James slung his good arm over Lee’s shoulders.

“It’s okay, kid,” Natasha heard him murmur as they returned to the building. “Happens to the best of us.”

Clint helped her up off the dry itchy ground. “You okay? Looking a little green there, Red.” He wasn’t wrong. When she landed on the grass it was like stepping on a jar of Play-Doh, but with her breakfast shooting out the opening instead of crusty clay. She swallowed hard and nodded. This had been happening all week and Natasha almost definitely knew why, but didn’t dare say a word to anyone until she was certain.

Inside the facility Lee was already settled with James in the cool-down room. Things seemed to be going okay without her, so Natasha took Steve by the arm to show him around. “That happens sometimes,” she warned him. “You probably remember. There are a lot of unstable kids here, abused kids; a day when we only have Lee to worry about is a good one. This is the staff room. We hang out and drink too much coffee in here. That door _should_ only be for staff. The cool-down room is through here and should only be used for big meltdowns, not Raina pulling a fit because she didn't get enough tater tots. There’s the dining room through there, and beyond that is the kitchen—door’s supposed to be locked at all times when we aren’t cooking. We do Costco runs every other Monday.”

From the staff room they went to the east wing of the building. “This is the rec room, where we do community meetings and game time. Afternoon group’s at four, before chores at five.”

“Group,” echoed Steve, frowning. “They do group therapy here now?”

Natasha made a noncommittal noise in the back of her throat. “Technically, no, it’s just everyone getting together and talking about things. Our role here isn’t to be these kids’ therapists or parents, no matter how much you might get attached and want to help. We aren’t professionals, we don’t have any kinds of degrees, right? So we don’t want to say the wrong thing. They have their own personal therapists for that, and a social worker comes every month to make sure things are running smooth. Our job is to create a safe environment and make sure the kids don’t kill each other or themselves. And I _wish_ that were a joke.”

Her voice was slow and soft, catching slightly in her throat where she still felt the burn of bile. The last thing she wanted was for one of the kids to hear her talking about them like this. Steve was nodding to show he understood, as she knew he would. Even as a boy within these very walls, Steve had always been far more perceptive than the adults in charge of him. It took less than two weeks living down the hall as teenagers to know that.

“I know you know all this, Steve, but it’s policy for me to remind you, and some stuff _has_ changed. This isn't an orphanage anymore, it's called a short-term facility, meaning it’s kind of like—a halfway house while kids are transitioning between foster care and going back to their parents, or the other way around. We usually don’t keep them longer than a year, but some have been here for almost three, so it’s not a perfect system. Right now we have Mike, Jemma, Lee, Grant, Miles, Raina, Trip, Kamala, and a new arrival coming in this afternoon, Mary Sue. That’s a lot of unhappy kids to keep an eye on and you have to _always_ have an eye on them.

“The boys and girls are a hallway apart, but in the same wing so we can check on everyone at once in case of emergencies.” She nodded to each corridor in turn. “Boys on the left, girls on the right. We do stickers on everyone’s door now, signifying their current—state. Self-harmers have to keep the door open at all times, EDs have to be accompanied to the bathroom after meals, things like that. Right now we just have Jemma to focus on. She’s our highest risk on-site. 14, and already a recovering anorexic.”

“That’s terrible,” Steve said. His face was the image of devastation.

Natasha shrugged. “That’s the way it is. We keep her door open and I go with her to the bathroom,” she explained. “She has a special diet to help her put on weight without triggering too much food-related stress.” 

Speaking of food, even though she just had breakfast before riding in to hear the Story, she was starving. As soon as the tour was over she sent Steve off to finish his paperwork in the office and read up on all the kids if he so desired, then went back to the break room. She pulled a box of Ritz crackers out of the cupboard just as James and Lee were leaving the cool-down room. Lee gave her the puppy dog eyes until she let him have a cracker, finger to lips to ensure his secrecy before he scurried off to play with the dozens of porcelain monkeys lined up in his room.

“How’d it go?” she murmured, breathing in the smell of James’s aftershave when he leaned in to take a cracker. 

Treat crammed between his teeth, he put his hand on her hip. “Abut s’good s’ever,” he replied around crumbs. James swallowed hard and grinned. His breath was salty. “You know Lee. He’s a good kid, he just gets mixed up. He’s a _really_ good kid.”

“I know he is.”

“I know you _know_ , I just—feel bad.”

The box sat abandoned on the counter so she could put both hands on his shoulders. His smile was small. She brushed a strand of hair from his cheek with a thumb. “You like him and he’s a good boy. We’re doing everything we can for him. Why else you think I let him steal snacks?” When he nodded glumly she kissed the dip in his chin, the highest she could reach without going up on her toes. It made him smile before pressing a kiss to her hair in return. He shuffled forward until her back was against the counter’s edge and he was slotted neatly between her knees.

“We really gotta stop meeting like this, gorgeous, or the kids’ll catch on,” he breathed into her hair, trailing a line of firm, present kisses down to her ear. There was nothing sexual in it, only warm comfort. “I love you.”

Natasha’s heart lodged itself in her throat. His voice was so soft she almost didn’t hear him. She worked her fingers into his hair, scratching his scalp the way she knew he liked. “We’d better get back before they notice we’re gone,” she told him, nudging his chin with her nose. With a last kiss to his collar bone she gently pushed him away so she could slide free. “Besides, the new girl’s gonna be here soon and I have to process her in.”

Were it more of an imperfect world, those brief exchanges in the kitchen might have been all they ever had, but Natasha knew better. After work she would go home to find James in the kitchen, scowling at the broken stove timer and cussing in Russian. She smiled to herself, holding onto the image to keep herself afloat.

The new girl was waiting for her in the office when Natasha arrived. She was almost 16, with hair midway down her torso in loose chestnut curls, golden brown skin, and dark eyes glued to her phone. “Mary Sue Poots?” asked Natasha.

“ _No_ ,” replied the girl. “That is the stupidest name in the universe. It’s _Skye_.”

Oh, thank god. That really was an unfortunate name, and Natasha was certain the other kids would tease her about it. “Skye, then.” She made a note on Skye’s file. “Welcome to Short Term Shield. I just have to look through your bag before I show you to your room.” 

She confiscated a pair of scissors, but before she could explain that Skye would get them back the girl let out a sigh. “I know,” she said flatly. “I can check them out from the cupboard in the office. No belts, no shoelaces, no closed doors, no _fucking freedom_.”

“And no _cussing_.”

“Oh, _shit_ , I forgot that one.”

The corner of Natasha’s mouth curled up against her will. “I’ll let that slide because it was clever, but only this once. Come on, let’s go to your room now.”

She carried Skye’s bag for her down the hall to the dorms, and placed it on her bed. “You can put anything on the walls that’s appropriate,” she warned.

“So no pictures of penises?” retorted Skye.

Natasha smirked over her shoulder as she unlocked the closet door. “Not unless they’re _very_ scientific.”

Skye was very quiet—then again, Natasha was quiet too. She understood how much weight the gaps between words could hold. Everything she had to say, wanted to say, knew she really _should_ say, balled together all at once and formed a knot in her throat more often than not, leaving just enough room to breathe and make small agreeable sounds, pushing out a few words at a time to lessen the pressure until new ones took shape. People could talk and talk and never say a word about themselves, but the things they did in silence was damning. Skye was scribbling in a notebook, her eyes flickering between the pages and watching Natasha.

"Can I see what you're drawing?" asked Natasha.

She hugged the book. "I'm not drawing, I'm writing, and it's private." Skye set her jaw as if expecting a fight, but Natasha conceded with a nod.

"I'll let you settle in. Dinner's at five. I have to leave the door open."

"I don't do that anymore."

“Yeah?" she asked, clearly unconvinced.

"And even if I did, leaving the door open two fucking inches wouldn't stop me."

"What did I say about cussing? That's a minus-point this time."

For the briefest instant the girl's eyes flickered, like she was surprised Natasha followed through. Then she visibly reigned herself in and forced a bored expression. “Oh, no. A minus-point. What am I gonna do?"

Natasha set her with a steely look. "Your attitude isn't helping either of us," she sternly said, then left to join the other kids in the rec room. They were watching some anime cartoon she had never heard of, so she sat with Jemma and braided her hair in the Dutch fashion.

"Like Katniss?" the girl asked meekly. Natasha hummed in confirmation. It was Jemma's favorite but she couldn't quite manage the backward mechanics of it, so she always put on a great show of trying and messing it up in front of Natasha before begging for help.

_I remember this_ , she thought faintly as she tied off the plait with a band from her own wrist. Mama would tie her hair in two long braids that ran all the way down to her waist and snapped like whips in a sharp wind. Natasha cut it all off, after the Leshy. Mostly she remembered the tug of fingers in her curls. It never hurt. Mama was good at that.

_So why can't I remember her face?_

Because she had behaved so well all week, not a single escape attempt and she hadn’t started up her Monopoly casino again, Natasha turned to Raina for community meeting. "Will you be secretary today?" she asked.

Raina went as red as the flowers on her dress and nodded. Someone (probably Kamala) had put dandelions in her hair. She took the clipboard and pen and called, "Community meeting is now in session!" with authority giving her cheeks a healthy glow. "Community announcements?"

Silence.

" _No_ announcements?" Raina asked. Her voice colored with annoyance that no one was jumping for her, until James raised his hand. Then she blushed anew because all the girls thought Bucky (the name he went by to everyone but Natasha, who met him when they were both still just lonely James and angry, sad Natalia) looked like a vampire. 

Which was apparently a compliment now.

"Guys, it's come to my attention that it's Grant's _birthday_ later this week," he grinned slowly. 

(That had changed since he and Natasha met, too. He was a smooth-talker, running his mouth while getting straight A’s, to the confusion of teachers and classmates alike. A social butterfly ostracizing himself to take care of younger kids who were being bullied. He became more thoughtful when he came back from Iraq with half an arm blown off.)

Grant blushed crimson and stared down at his knees. "Doesn't matter," he mumbled. 

"Of course it does, it's your last birthday with us," insisted Clint from across the room. "What d'you wanna do, man?"

For a very long and tense few moments the young man thought, brow deeply furrowed behind his shaggy hair. "Can I get a tattoo?" he asked.

Behind his back Natasha furiously shook her head. Absolutely not. It would be a bureaucratic nightmare.

"Anything _but_ that, Grant," replied James apologetically.

Another half-minute, then:

"Can I cut my hair?"

Natasha, Clint, and James exchanged looks over his head. Steve was hiding on the outskirts of the room, not knowing what to make of these proceedings.

"We—really just meant _food_ , Grant."

"I don't want food, I wanna cut my hair."

James shrugged helplessly, gesturing to Natasha. _Your call._

"As long as I'm holding the scissors," she conceded. Even if he didn't smile, Grant looked satisfied. "So, everyone: food ideas for Grant's birthday?"

They all started to talk at once. A headache formed somewhere in the region behind Natasha's left eye.

When the night shift had all arrived and settled in for the evening to make dinner, Natasha found Skye in her room and knocked twice before entering. “Hey.”

“ _What?_ ” growled Skye, scribbling in her little book again. It definitely didn’t look like writing from the door.

“I’m heading out for the night.”

“Thanks for the news flash. I’ll stay tuned for more as the story develops.”

She rolled her eyes. “I just wanted to make sure you know, I told the staff you prefer being called Skye. You won’t hear the name Mary Sue Poots unless you want to—or someone makes a mistake, I guess.”

“Good to know,” Skye snorted. “Can you _go_ now?”

The question was barely out of her mouth before Natasha was out the door. She knew when she wasn’t wanted and wasn’t going to push her luck with a girl this hostile. Pushing the wrong buttons meant meltdowns or escape attempts and neither were favorable. Natasha was familiar with that kind of stress, the terror of not knowing where her triggers were coming from, and would rather not force that on someone else. Back and hips aching, she left the facility. More than anything she wanted to go home and take a bath, but there was something else she had to do first.

Steve was talking with Clint just off the sidewalk. "So what happened with the kid who made you shit yourself?" he asked, all innocence as he and Clint both fiddled with their hearing aids.

And, because Natasha knew him well enough to know he would lie through his teeth, she interrupted. "Ian?" She shrugged. "He ran away again, and two days later they found him dead in the bushes."

" _What?!_ "

“Yeah. That's how the story ends."

"I—don't like that part," muttered Clint, rubbing the back of his neck so he didn't have to look at them. Steve walked off shaking his head in stunned disbelief. Things had changed drastically since she and Steve lived in the facility. It had been two sashays from a run-of-the-mill orphanage in their heyday and now it was a halfway house for life-or-death cases more often than not.

Then again, _her_ case had felt like it was life or death sometimes. A lot of times.

"Need a ride?" called James, throwing his backpack into the Forrester while she unlocked her bike.

"Nah," she replied, smiling over her shoulder. "Gonna clear my head."

The spokes and gears gently ticked as she coasted down the hill away from the facility, sighing in relief when the wind caught in her hair. Sometimes she felt like an old woman after days like these, desperate just to go home and put on her pajamas. She was 24 years old. This was supposed to be the most exciting time in a person's life, and there she was: only seeing sunlight during rec time and on the commute. It felt good to stretch her legs a little more than walking around campus or running after attempted AWOLs. Feel the sun on her face, waking up with a few more freckles than the day before. 

There was no joy in riding today. All Natasha felt was the ball of anxiety forming in the pit of her stomach. The sweat misting under her arms and breasts ran cold. Stars danced around the edges of her eyes. By the time she turned into the clinic parking lot Natasha was certain she was going to vomit in the bushes. Then she climbed off her bike and _did_ vomit in the bushes.

The sooner she got this over with, the better.

\---

"—so, the results are pretty clear," the specialist said once Natasha was seated across her desk. "How are you feeling?"

The moment she heard the words come out the other woman's mouth it was like Natasha's plug was pulled and she deflated. The knot was forming in her throat, all the way down to her chest and her belly. "Can't say I'm surprised," she forced out, brows drawing together. "I took probably five home tests before I did the blood draw last week, so."

The thumb on her right hand started to burn and itch, a compartmentalizations of what she was really feeling, according to her therapist from six years ago. It was powerful, all-consuming; Natasha could have fought the sensation if she weren't reeling in shock. Her index finger twitched twice, then started to scratch and pick at the troublesome cuticle. If she could just get rid of that little bit of dry skin clinging on, her head would clear and everything would be okay. It would stop burning and she could focus, she could figure out what to do—but what _was_ there to do? Keep it? She could barely keep her own life in line, let alone a whole other person.

"This is a big shock, clearly," the older woman said. She was completely and unrestrainedly earnest in the lines around her eyes. "But I want you to know, Natasha, there are options we—"

" _No_ ," interrupted Natasha. The single syllable burned up her throat like bile.

"No? No, you don't want to hear your options?"

“I—just want to make an appointment. For Monday."

"...okay. I'll check when I have an open time slot. Have you ever been pregnant before?"

_Stop crying! Look at the camera, Matryoshka, and open your mouth. Good girl. Good girl._

"N—hm." Oh, god, her head hurt so much. "Once."

Dark sad eyes watched her fidget across the desk. "Okay." A warm hand covered hers. "Okay."

\---

Natasha couldn't go home after, not in the state she was in. She rode circles around the park, resistance all the way up as she cranked her way up hills then coasted down with eyes closed. Wind tossed her hair around like a million tiny whips and chains and lengths of silken ribbon licking her cheeks and neck.

She couldn't remember who taught her to ride. Her father, or maybe her old guardian Ivan Petrovitch, it didn't matter. What mattered was she _could_. It was the closest to flying a person could get without leaving the ground. It was freedom. It was her own muscle, her own sweat, powering a machine that could travel 10 times faster than a man. When she pumped her legs as hard and fast as she could then hit the crest at the top of a hill she screwed her eyes shut and imagined she was a shooting star, streaking across the sky for all the Western Hemisphere to see. 

And Natasha knew, deep down, that someday she would hit a lucky streak. She would reach terminal velocity and burn up in the atmosphere, a briefly vivid blink of light.

 ---

"You were gone a while."

"It smells good in here."

"Had some time to myself. Decided to make Baba's _pirozhki_."

His pronunciation, like the shape of his forearm as he rolled dough one-handed, was perfect. "Looks like there's enough for _two_ ," Natasha commented lightly, peering over his shoulder. Vegetables too, the frozen kind with cheese that she liked so much.

"Oh, yeah? I didn't notice. I _am_ , though, starting to wonder if you're having an affair. With your bike.”

"Leave Liho out of this," she teased, kissing the back of his good shoulder. "I'm gonna shower. I'm all sweaty from riding his comfy seat too hard."

He snapped a dish towel at her butt as she jumped out of reach. "You named your bike after Pure Evil! Liho can suck my dick!" he called indignantly then turned away, grumbling. "Fuckin' Liho. Show _you_ a comfy seat, motherfucker.”

As soon as she was out of eyeshot Natasha's smile fell away and the weary heaviness returned to her limbs. God, she was tired. She pushed herself too hard this week in some twisted denial that everything was the same, that everything was normal. If she pretended long enough that she wasn't pregnant, maybe it would go away. Maybe it would all turn out to be a bad dream.

She sat in the bottom of the bath tub as the shower ran, scalding, down her back, dripping from the ends of her hair, running in the grooves between scars on her legs. Some of them were faded, but most still vivid enough to name the _when, where,_ and _why_. Most had something to do with the Leshy. Others were his _special friends_ , or bad dreams about fire or Mama screaming her name. Only a few had to do with someone from the _Now_. After James went to Iraq, things got hard for a while, but Natasha made herself promise she would only do it once because James would be so hurt if he knew it was indirectly his fault. She did it four more times before actually stopping.

That was six years ago. Just when his first tour was about to end he came home half an arm short and looking half dead for his efforts. Natasha hadn't left his side until he was able to leave the hospital. He stayed with Steve for four months, and when the Wounded Warriors Project banded together to build him a house of his own, he asked Natasha to share it with him. She remembered joking that she didn't fit the criteria, but he had gone serious and said, "You may not be wounded, but you're just as much a warrior as me." Over the next week they christened every room of that little house, and over the ensuing years made it into a home.

Maybe a baby was the next logical step in the process. She was certain that they were neither of them conventional enough for marriage, but James had no qualms against openly and happily expressing his desire to spend the rest of his life with her.

_Maybe we could,_ she thought, finally standing and scrubbing herself clean. _Maybe it will mean I finally won._

Dinner was a quiet affair, which she blamed on tiredness and only lied halfway. Yes, Natasha was exhausted from her bike ride and the irritating early pregnancy symptoms, but she was thinking too hard to offer much by way of productive conversation. James didn't mind. He just leaned against her side on the couch and picked veggies off her plate. Insufferable man.

To make up for her silence she offered a game of Story Time, which she invented when they were kids. They had 60 seconds to write a short story about each other and whoever came up with the best one was the winner. Natasha almost always won, unless she showed mercy or was having a bad day. The timer started and they both started to scribble, every so often glancing up at each other or into space as they thought. The minute always felt shorter than it ought, especially when James kept tickling her with his toes across the length of the sofa.

"Time!" she called, but he kept scribbling. 

She jabbed him with her foot and he howled indignantly. "Okay, okay, just read yours first," he grumbled, which meant he would be trying to make adjustments while she did so, but Natasha indulged him. She fumbled with the notebook in her hands for second, embarrassed.

"Once upon another time, there was a handsome man  
His hair was cut all crooked and his eyes were very sad  
He thought that he was broken, because he went to war  
But his girlfriend told him, 'that's what friends are for.  
I will be your arms if you will be my heart,  
We'll run away together and make our own stars.'"

Looking up, Natasha felt color blossom up her neck at the expression James's face. "The rhyming was pretty lame, huh?" she asked.

James just shook his head. "How are you so _good_ at that?!" he whined, then threw himself dramatically backward and nearly fell off the couch. "Come on, don't make me do mine, it's like a kindergartener wrote it!"

"Even better," she grinned and prodded him again. "Come _oooonnnnnnnn_."

"No, it sucks."

"So did mine."

"You really think my hair's crooked?"

"Yes, and it will continue to be as long as you keep cutting it yourself, now stop stalling."

"Just gimme another minute!" 

"No way, cheater!"

He sighed heavily, as if his whole world were ending via horrible embarrassment. Then he cleared his throat.

"Once upon a time there was a pretty girl. She was quiet. She tended to think a lot, but she thought so many things that flowers started to grow from her—shit, I can't read my writing—from her _head_. Everyone thought she was beautiful. Uh...the end."

James looked up at her so sheepishly that Natasha felt like she'd been punched in the gut. "Why are you so _nice_ to me?" she asked, dumbstruck.

He blinked. "Are we being serious now?"

She nodded, too stunned to speak.

“Because,” he shrugged. “You're the weirdest, smartest, most beautiful person I've ever met. I gotta keep you on my side, doll."

"I'll never _not_ be on your side, James."

Leaning across the space between them, Natasha kissed him hard and he drew back in surprise. "Is this happening?" he asked warily. "Because you haven't kissed me like that in a while and I don't wanna presume." 

Natasha frowned. “A while? How long?”

“It’s been like a week since we last had sex, Nata.”

Nata. His special nickname for when he felt anxious or like he was overstepping his bounds. Natasha’s frown deepened and she closed a hand around his shoulder, squeezing, trying to find solid ground when it felt suddenly like she was on a boat in choppy waters. It was no coincidence that she had submitted her blood for testing at the clinic a week ago. She never meant to take all this out on James. All the damage the Leshy had done was still causing aftershocks nearly 10 years later, ruining her relationship with one of the only people in her life that really mattered.

The hand on his shoulder started to twitch, and suddenly her index finger was gently scratching away at the seam in his shirt. Anything to distract her mind from thoughts of the Leshy. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. The knot in her throat was growing big and hot.

“No, no!” James gathered her into a hug, his hand a firm and comforting presence at the nape of her neck. “Hey, Nata, stop that, you don’t have anything to apologize for. The second I start making demands, you get to pull my dick off with your teeth. Remember? You remember that? How old were we when I made you that promise, 16?"

Startled into laughter at the vulgarity of their youth, Natasha lay her head on James's shoulder. "I remember. That's a big promise for a needy guy like you." The knot had loosened somewhat—for now.

For a long time they stayed that way, the only change that James adjusted his hold so he could comb his fingers through her hair. It was still damp from her shower, oily with conditioner, but he didn't seem to mind. 

He kissed the crown of her head and whispered that he loved her, and somewhere deep in her heart she said _I love you_ right back.

They cleaned up their dishes in silence. Natasha knew the worried concentration furrowing James's brow meant by now. He was wondering why, after knowing each other nine years, she still didn't trust him. It made her both sad and enraged that he would think she did anything but trust him explicitly; it had nothing to do with him and everything to do with her being weak and haunted and so, so stupid. At least with her hands submerged in soapy water she couldn't pick at her cuticles easily.

"You want I should sleep on the couch tonight?" James asked while they were brushing their teeth side by side at the bathroom sink.

Natasha looked up at him with toothpaste dribbling down her chin. "Why would I want that?" she frowned.

He shook his head and rinsed. "Just checking."

With him curled against her back, Natasha felt safe as she fell asleep.


	2. Tuesday

The Leshy was in her dreams. Big and dark and monstrous, he crawled up into the bed, into the space between her legs, and started to touch her like he and his _special friends_ used to when she was a little child. Natasha squirmed and whimpered but the Leshy only wrapped around her tighter. Like a snake, a boa constrictor unhinging its jaw to swallow her alive. But Natasha was bigger, no longer a small girl. She could fight back now.

Natasha lashed out with a scream, trying to alert someone, anyone, that she was in trouble and she was going to kill the Leshy but it wasn't her fault. Her hand encountered solid flesh and she woke to her own grunt and James rolling away, clutching his face. There was blood on his hand. 

"What the _fuck_ , Natalia?" he groaned. He crawled out of bed and blindly vanished into the bathroom to check out the cuts her fingernails made in his cheek and neck.

Natasha sat up and looked around, gaping at the empty room. This was wrong, this was so wrong, this wasn’t supposed to happen in her house, that only happened in the Leshy’s house. A strangled sound fell from her lips and she put her head in her hands, rocking back and forth until the nightmare faded from her mind. Then the bed dipped with James's weight and she was back in it. 

She tensed and slid down to the space between the bed and wall, hugging herself tight. "I'm sorry," she choked through the knot in her throat. "God, I'm sorry. Your hand was—I had a nightmare and freaked out. Shit, shit, _goddammit_ , I thought I was getting _better!”_ Her hand struck out blindly and banged on the wall. The window rattled.

"You _are_ getting better, Nata," he quietly insisted, rubbing his hand over his face and wincing when he ran across a cut. "It's just a-a misstep or some—shit, I think this one's still bleeding, can you please get off the floor and look? _Please?_ "

It took most of her effort to get back up onto the bed, pulling a tissue from the box as she climbed up beside him. At least she wasn't crying. Nothing needed stitches, but she had to put liquid bandage over some of the worst damage. James was careful not to flinch when her hands were in close proximity to his face, yet she could still see the hesitation in his eyes. Natasha hated that he was sometimes afraid of her. Even if she didn't blame him. She couldn't, not when she really was borderline certifiable.

"Are you going back to sleep?" James asked when everything was put away.

She shook her head. "I need to clear my head. See you at work."

"Nata..."

"Is fine. I'm— _I'm_ fine. We'll talk later."

Still in her pajamas (thank God for yoga pants), she climbed on her bike and sped off down the street. It was still early enough to be dark outside, but the sun would be up soon. The very moment she was certain James wasn't following Natasha let out a scream muffled into the crook of her elbow and let herself break apart. Tears were pushed back into her hair by the force of how fast she was moving but she didn't slow down. Let a car hit her; if she didn't die maybe it would kill the embryo in the pit of her stomach, bringing all this shit back up to the surface. Fucking baby. Fucking Leshy who took something as good and pure and innocent as a new baby and had to ruin it, just like he ruined her, her childhood, her adulthood, everything.

She didn't realize she was riding to Baba's house until she was less than a mile away. There was still plenty of time before the day shift, and she needed a change of clothes. It wouldn’t hurt to stop in on the woman to whom she owed her life.

It _was_ a good life, no matter how many times she tried to wreck it.

Baba wasn’t technically ever her guardian, but had been delighted that her favorite foster child had started courting a fellow Russian native when they were in high school. Despite being only 50 at the time she insisted that everyone call her Baba, the diminutive for _Grandmother_ in Russian. She cared for her foster children with a firm but loving hand, but had always shown a special fondness for Natalia, her skinny cat, and the mischievous smooth-talking James "Bucky" Barnes.

To a girl who had been two sashays away from mute when she was thrown into freshman year at his high school, James was both enthralling and infuriating. Constantly coming up with some bullshit or other about anything and everything, always ready with a line and a smile and questions, the endless questions. They were always superficial, which was something Natalia had appreciated, and he claimed to have learned Russian so they could talk without anyone eavesdropping. He had such an easy charm, Natalia thought it was a miracle he hadn't been adopted until she discovered he had been with Baba since he was nine. He had also known Russian the whole damn time, but wanted to put on a show for the quiet new girl. 

Baba liked to remind them that they were silly children. The old woman had known even then the struggles they went through, the things that made them grow up before their time, so it made sense for Natasha to come to her for help now.

A bleary-eyed boy with brown hair in tight curls sticking out eight inches from his head answered the door. He must have recognized her from pictures on the family room wall, because he immediately yelled over his shoulder, "BABA! One-a your grown kids is here!" and a startled curse echoed up from the back of the house.

"The party is not until Thursday; you're early," laughed Baba, wiping flour on her pajama pants as she went. The gleam in her eyes dimmed when she saw Natasha's state. She was well aware that every inch of her body language screamed _flight risk_. The only difference was that now there were no laws requiring Baba to call her foster parents and keep her contained, yet still the woman stepped forward and wrapped her in a hug. "Come in. I'm making _Blini_ and I want you to meet my new babies."

Stepping inside the house, Natasha instantly relaxed. Even if she hadn’t lived here, Natalia spent more than half her time in those four walls, when her own foster home reminded her only of the nightmare waiting for her in court. She thought she would kill herself when the jury took a week to decide the Leshy's fate. Baba made Natalia sweet pumpkin soup and forced her to talk through the terror rather than bottling it in until she hurt herself.

"Make yourself useful," instructed Baba, passing over a bowl of lumpy Blini batter. Natasha mixed until it was smooth, relieved to give her arms some work for once. Switching to Russian, she asked: «You remember this from before?»

_Before_. The heaviest word in the world to Natasha Romanoff. The time before the Leshy, before America, before the waking nightmare that was her life for seven long years. «You know I don’t,» she sighed, switching languages as well so the kids wouldn't overhear. «I don't even remember my mother's _face_ , you think I would remember cooking with her?»

Baba shrugged. «Only checking. You have had a lot of time to dig up those lost memories, haven't you? It's been 10 years since they put him away—what did you call him? The _Leshy_.» That seemed to amuse the old lady some as she spread butter in a skillet. «Such a vivid mind you have, my skinny cat.»

«I’m not that skinny anymore, Baba.»

A gentle nudge to her shoulder. «True. You're looking a little thicker in the waist, aren't you?» She cackled like a witch in a fairy tale at the look Natasha gave her. They spread batter out thin in the hot skillet, Baba's hands steady covering Natasha's as she struggled with flipping. «Come on, tell me a story.»

Natasha smiled. They all had their survival methods in the foster system, some of which formed into codes under Baba's roof. She never told them to _Tell me what's bothering you_ , only to tell her a story. So they told her things like a story instead. It felt safer, less like an interrogation, that way. «The girl had a bad dream and hit James,» she admitted.

«You hit him in the dream?»

«No, I hit him in the face. Not hard, but my nails…»

Her hand was seized for Baba's scrutiny. There was still a spot of dried blood under one nail. «They need trimming. I could do it after breakfast.»

«I don't need you to do it for me,» she pointed out, at which Baba made a distasteful sound and flapped her hand. «My sharp object privileges were restored a long time ago, Baba.»

Baba threw her hand up defensively. «I only offered. Remember I offered.» She switched back to English when it was time to call her current charges to breakfast. 

There were four children in the house now: Jessica, Carol, Teddy, and another James, the dark-eyed boy who answered when they rang the bell. Much less crowded than when her James lived there. Or maybe her 14-year-old self didn’t care for children as much as she did now. Often her favorite times to be at work were when there were little tiny ones staying at the facility. Slower to anger than pre-teens and less closed-off than teenagers, even ones from troubled homes were sweet. They never stayed long for exactly those reasons; all the foster parents and adopting couples wanted them. 

Little James (who went by Jimi, like Hendrix, whom he insisted was secretly his father despite the problematic arithmetic) was the youngest at 10. A pair of headphones appeared to be permanently attached to his person, and even when they sat around his delicate brown neck strains of classic rock blared from the small speakers. After him was Carol. She was 13 and constantly scowling; she and Skye would get on like a house on fire. Natasha didn’t mind that she didn’t talk much. Teddy was next at 14, and finally 17-year-old Jessica. She was gorgeous and smiled so widely at everything her skin looked like dark rubber. 

They were all very attractive children, especially in Baba’s esteem. Baba kept photographs of all the foster children scattered around the house, in scrapbooks, no matter how long they stayed with her. Over 150 foster children had passed through the house since Baba registered to be a foster parent in the early 90s. 

Her husband abused her, she left him before they had a chance to have kids, and rather than wait around trying to find the right person to start a family with dedicated her time to caring for children who didn’t have anyone to care for them. Baba loved every single child she fostered no matter if they loved her back or not. Sometimes they moved on to other homes, sometimes they went back to their biological parents, and sometimes they aged out of the system; Baba adored them all without discrimination or bias.

“You wanna shower and change, Natasha? I have clothes you can borrow,” suggested Jessica when she noticed Natasha catching a whiff of her own sweat and cringing. Without even waiting for a response she bounded up the stairs, black curls bouncing. When Natasha finally followed (legs screaming in protest on every step) Jessica was waiting on her bed with a grin. “You know, we’re kind of like sisters even though we never met.”

“Are we?” smirked Natasha, looking through the closet. It was all very young for her tastes, but it would have to do and she and Jessica really were close in size. “I mean, we’d have to be half-sisters, considering…”

The beautiful girl made a show of blinking in confusion, then jumped at the sight of her reflection in the mirror, as if noticing for the first time that she was black. “Oh my god, when did _that_ happen?!” They chuckled conspiratorially and continued searching for something work-appropriate for Natasha to wear, hips and shoulders brushing. 

“Don’t tell Baba I said it, but I think she’s been recycling the same clothes on us since she started this gig. Unless you _wanna_ wear a butterfly-sequined denim vest to work?”

Natasha stared in horror. “I wore that to my first day of senior year on a dare,” she confessed to more laughter from Jessica. “Picture day, too. I think Baba has some of Bucky’s old yearbooks, you should check it out.” She opted not to mention that her James in return had worn his hair in pigtails on the same occasions. She didn't have many people to impress during their school days, and James just didn't care what anyone thought of him, so they did stupid things to make each other smile all the time.

What was so different now?

She supposed she could blame her age, but she was not yet old, even if she sometimes felt and acted like a crone. Hell, the kids at Short Term Shield called her the Ice Bitch behind her back all the time. When people didn't talk much at all except to say _no_ all the time, it could be interpreted that way. But she wasn't a bitch. She wasn't old or bitter (or perhaps a little bitter, but never to those kids who didn't deserve it). She was a person, a fucked-up person who didn't like to talk a lot. 

Once she was dressed and situated Baba insisted on driving Natasha to work. "Jessica will watch the others," she promised. "You'll kill yourself riding bike all the way to work. I know how to get there; James can drive home tonight, you get your bike back tonight or Thursday."

Natasha's gut twisted. She didn't _want_ to leave her bike, it was her only escape when things got hard. James would love it. He tended to use their alone time trapped in the car to bring up things he knew she would otherwise run from. It was by no means cruel, just clever. “Hm,” she finally nodded, picking at her thumb cuticle until Baba slapped her hands. “Okay, fine, let’s go.”

Outfitted in a sparkly green tank top and pair of too-tight skinny jeans, the least conspicuous articles of clothing Jessica had, Natasha watched out the window as they drove. It wasn’t too far, but Baba was right, a second bike ride of that length would have deemed her completely useless for the rest of the day. As it were she stole a short nap on the way and woke up to find James waiting at the gates.

His whole face lit up at the sight of Baba in the driver’s seat, running around the car to kiss her while Natasha climbed out. “Are you looking forward to your party?” he asked, leaning in the window to better face her.

“You know I am, _rebenok_ ,” beamed Baba with a pinch to his cheek. She exchanged a few more words in a softer voice, which Natasha elected to ignore in favor of heading inside to check in.

As Sam filled her in on the night shift activity, she filled a Super Soaker tank with water. “Nothing too exciting,” grinned Sam. He watched her with clear amusement. “How about you, fun night with Buck? Saw those scratches on his face. _Mrowr_.”

“Very cute.” She punched his shoulder to show just how _cute_ she thought the suggestion was. Watching him rub the sore spot for the rest of the week would be satisfaction enough. For now, she shouldered her gun.

It was time to wake up the kids.

Most everyone got up without a hitch. Jemma was already awake and practically singing like a Disney princess, even while brushing her teeth. “Good morning, Natasha!” she beamed, cheekbones sharp and angular. Her eyes widened at the sight of the Super Soaker, but there was a gleam of mischief there, too. “I know for a _fact_ that Mike still sleeping. Also, _Trip_ tried to cop a feel on me during movie time last night, but I didn’t mind.”

“Well, good for you,” chuckled Natasha as she passed. “I’ll do your hair after breakfast, okay?”

“Like Katniss?”

“Just like Katniss. Promise.”

Jemma wasn’t wrong. Everyone was up or in the process of getting up, but at the end of the boys’ hallway Mike Peterson was still fast asleep, buried under a mountain of covers. Natasha pumped the gun until the pressure was full and aimed. “I am not afraid to use this.”

One dark eye appeared. “You wouldn’t _dare_.”

“Up in five seconds or you’ll see what I would or wouldn’t dare,” she smirked.

Mike mumbled something like, “You don’t have the _balls_ ,” and disappeared face-first into the mattress. Rolling her eyes, Natasha let fire with the water gun. It was like the bedclothes came alive with how fast Mike was scrambling to get away.

“Come on, kid,” she grinned. “Breakfast’s in five, then morning community meeting. Up and at ‘em.”

He was still muttering curses as she sauntered down the hall to the kitchen.

Another presence warmed her back as she started toasting Eggo waffles in the kitchen’s massive industrial toaster. Jemma needed gluten-free, and Lee too, because he did everything Jemma did. Grant hated waffles so he got toast. Kamala was observing Ramadan, so she had eaten before sunrise with Sam and was staying in her room for group meals. Everybody got a scrambled egg, unless they were allergic, and a cup of fruit.

“You want to do the eggs or keep working on this?” she asked James over her shoulder.

He groaned. “I was gonna scare you.”

“You _really_ think that’s a good idea?” Turning to face him, Natasha leaned back against the counter and frowned. James’ face fell. “How’s your neck?”

“It’s okay,” he shrugged, turning to show her. Most of the red marks had faded, leaving only some bruising and one small spot, perhaps a centimeter long, where she had broken skin. It was a scab now, hardly noticeable in the stubble on his jaw. He was still smiling when he turned back to look at her but it took a sad edge. “Baba said you were pretty messed up earlier.”

Since he wasn’t actually making any move to help, Natasha crossed to the fridge and started cracking eggs into a bowl herself. “I’m fine, I wasn’t _messed_ _up_ , I was upset that I hurt you. Grab the mixer for me?”

“Do you want to talk about it?” asked James as he passed over the mixer, then started plucking waffles out of the massive toaster. 

Natasha’s determined stirring would hopefully give him all the answer he needed. No, she did not want to talk about it, not at all. It was just one minute of their lives so she didn’t see why he had to bring it up again. She said she was sorry, didn’t she? What else did he want from her? The eggs smoothed and blended and she poured them into the hot frying pan, oddly satisfied by the bubbly sizzle.

This was nice. Almost normal, in a way—or as close to normal as they would get. Making breakfast together. Listening to the sound of kids sleepily arguing over the TV in the other room. It made the knot in her throat feel less of a knot and more of a bubble, buoying her up. When she glanced across the room to meet James’ eye heat crept up her neck like a teenager. “What’s that look on your face?” she asked him.

He started setting plates along the counter for her to dish eggs onto. “Just that I love you,” he murmured in reply, planting a quick kiss on her cheek. “Even if you don’t want to talk about it right now.”

Turning, Natasha almost jumped out of her skin when she realized Lee was standing in the door. “Not yet!” she snapped, feeling herself flush crimson as James jumped away. “Wait until we call you, Lee, you know that!”

“Sorry, Natasha!” Jemma called, quickly grabbing the skinny boy by the hand and tugging him away. “Come on, Lee, let’s play with your monkeys until breakfast is done.” Their voices switched to whispers as soon as they were out of sight. “ _Did he say what I think he said?_ ”

_“He said he loves her.”_

_“I knew it!”_

_“Shh!”_

“ _You_ will be the one asking them to keep their mouths shut,” Natasha glared at James as she put individual juice and milk cartons at each place setting. He just grinned back at her like it didn’t matter. "Last thing I need is Garrett calling us in for a discussion on _appropriate workplace behavior_."

That wiped the grin off his face. "God, you think he'll do that?" he groaned. "I mean I know he's a prick to you, but it's the 21st century and we were dating way before we started here!"

"Which we elected not to tell him when he was hired," she pointed out frankly. "Because Nick owed my foster parents a favor, and we didn't want this exact thing happening. Figure it out and talk to them.” Turning away before he could reply, she hollered over one shoulder: “ _KIDS! BREAKFAST!"_

Nine pairs of feet came stampeding toward the dining room, effectively putting an end to their conversation. Making sure no one was cussing or fighting took up most of their energy. At one point James made a gesture toward Lee and Jemma, as if asking whether she wanted him to talk to them now, which was stupid. She vigorously shook her head _No, no way,_ that would be the dumbest thing he had ever done, and he had done his fair share in the last seven years.

“How’d you sleep last night?” she asked Skye, watching the girl sluggishly shove a forkful of eggs into her mouth. “It’s not always easy, being in a new place.”

She shrugged. “Like crap, but it’s got nothing to do with the place,” grumbled Skye. “I gotta talk to the doctor about changing my hydroxyzine dosage."

"I can set something up," nodded Natasha. She looked up just in time to see Clint snagging a grape from Raina's bowl and sticking his tongue out when she whined at him. "First community meeting today. Excited?"

" _Thrilled_ ," retorted Skye, her mouthful of waffle spraying slightly with disdain. Natasha wrinkled her nose and continued down the table.

The seat on Jemma's left side (her right was always occupied by Lee) was empty, so Natasha sat. The younger girl stared hatefully down at her gluten-free waffle. No syrup, no butter, just a chopped-up, dry, brown disk that was also probably cold by now. Her fork had disrupted some of her egg and fruit but none had actually passed her lips. "How are you doing, Jemma?"

She made a strangled sound and shook her head, hands opening and closing in her lap as she tried to keep it together.

“Hey, remind me, what color were your brother's eyes?" asked Natasha quietly, her voice barely above a whisper.

Gasping, Jemma twitched and squirmed uncomfortably. "Brown, like mine," she muttered and took a reluctant bite of her waffle. It had been very delicately cut into precise bite-sized squares. "I'll eat it if you stop asking about him."

She squeezed Jemma's shoulder and got up to start the dishes.

"Where's Steve, we scare him off or something?" Clint asked, sidling up beside her to start rinsing.

"Nah, he's got night shift training with Sam tonight. Has Sam left yet or is he still with Kamala in her room?"

"He was just going out the door when I was herding the kids in." He nudged her shoulder with his, to make her look at him. “Hey, I gotta tell you something while they’re all distracted. Sam told me that at room checks last night, he found a metric butt-ton of weed stuffed in Grant’s mattress.”

She sucked in a breath so fast her head started spinning. “What? He’s turning 18 in four days; _why_ would he do that?”

“Doesn’t wanna leave state custody?” suggested Clint with a shrug. “Wouldn’t be the first time. S’what I did.”

The spinning was getting worse. How could Grant do that? Sure, he was quiet and got mad at the tip of a hat, but he was a good kid and he was smart, really smart. Natasha gripped the edge of the counter, teeth grit tight.

”You okay, Red?"

Her heart jumped unexpectedly into her throat, accompanied by a twist of her stomach. "Yeah, just gotta pee. Can you keep at this for a minute?" At his nod Natasha hurried out in carefully-measured steps to make her stride look normal, then broke into a run once out of eyeshot. Knowing that breakfast would get out soon, she skipped the bathrooms entirely and shot out the fire door instead, just in time to spew her own breakfast all over the grass. “Eugh. Fuck.”

Wiping sweat from the back of her neck, Natasha crouched with her back against the brick side of the facility and put her head in her hands. This was not happening. It _could_ _not_ be happening now. Morning sickness was absolutely unacceptable with almost a week until her appointment. She never got sick, and could therefore only fake the flu for a day at the most. James would catch on.

“Morning break?”

Fucking _perfect_. “Hi, Garrett. I just needed some air,” she explained, standing up to brush brick dust off the ass of her jeans. As long as she didn’t look at Garrett, maybe that usual slimy shiver wouldn’t crawl down her spine. “How’s tricks?”

The facility director shrugged. “Can’t complain. So—word in my office?” He pointed to the door. What other choice did Natasha have but do what her boss said? “I wanna show you something, a real kicker, you’ll love it.”

A bobble-head.

“It’s solar-powered,” grinned Garrett, pointing needlessly at the window. “When sunlight hits the panel, it sets the mechanism going, see?”

“That is one _happy_ little daisy, sir,” nodded Natasha, too jumpy to hide the scorn in her voice. He wouldn’t notice anyway.

“Right?” retorted Garrett delightedly. He took a beat to let the moment pass, then hefted a sigh. “So—how’s Miss Poots doing?”

She blinked. “Who? Oh—Skye? She’s good. It’s her first community meeting today.”

Nodding, Garrett said, “Good, good. Her parents are good people, friends of a friend, very cultured.” Cultured? What did that even mean? “Mary Sue’s a real _bad seed_ , you know? You try to raise them right, do everything your parents did, and they start acting out anyway. She’s got weekend passes with her parents, and her dad should be coming around to get her on her 16th birthday tomorrow, for dinner and a movie. I promised we’d do what we can for her.”

The look on Garrett’s face said something else. He was nervous. Politician parents? That would explain why their being _cultured_ was so important. “We do what we can for _everyone_ , sir,” she pointed out.

“Well, _make_ _sure_ you keep an eye on Mary Sue,” retorted Garrett sharply. “She’s an invaluable member of our little family, and I think she could benefit from a few talks in my office, so—next time I’m not seeing one of the others, I’ll pencil in an appointment with her.”

There it was, that shiver. Natasha usually trusted her gut with stuff like this, but Garrett had given her the heebie-jeebies since day one and he’d never offered any indication of why he made her so uncomfortable. Her meter was all off when it came to him. 

“Enough with the smoke breaks out the side door, understood?”

“It _wasn’t_ a—” Natasha stopped herself. This was not a battle worth fighting. “Yeah, fine.”

On her way out the door, Garrett called her name again. “You should get one of these,” he nodded at the bobble head, while a dozen others clicked softly behind him in the display case he had set up on the windowsill. “They’re a real trip.”

Community meeting was already under way by the tine Natasha made it to the rec room. Jemma was secretary this time. Over her head Natasha mouthed to Clint, _Bathroom?_

He nodded once to confirm that Jemma had been escorted to the bathroom after breakfast, an upward jerk of the chin, then turned his attention back to the meeting. His hands were wrinkled from dishwater.

“—so, guys, I’m sure you’ve already seen her around, but we have a new resident,” said James slowly, indicating Skye with a tip of the head. “This is _Skye_. Skye, you wanna introduce yourself?”

It appeared that introducing herself was the approximate last thing on her mind. Skye looked up at the ceiling instead of at anyone around her, reluctant to make eye contact. “Listen,” she started frankly. “Not to be rude or anything, but I don’t plan on being here for long, and I’m not super big on short-term relationships or friendships or whatever, so don’t take it personally if I’m not exactly _eager_ to have bonding time and sing Kumbaya and braid each other’s hair.”

Jemma, who was neglecting her secretarial duties to struggle with a Katniss braid at that very moment, looked stricken. Without waiting to be asked, Natasha sat on the couch behind her and started working on salvaging the braid. Her hands were shaking. Even if they looked like polar opposites and Skye had already proven more talkative, it was like looking in a mirror at herself when she was 15 years old. Constantly pushing everyone away, convinced they would disappear at a moment’s notice. Creeping coldness into her voice, her heart, her veins to convince herself that she was okay, that she didn’t need them, that she didn’t need to be happy to survive. She just needed to _survive_.

It hurt, remembering those days before James was important to her. All he represented to her was a nuisance, an irritation, always asking those questions, so smooth, so tempting to a lonely girl who hadn’t known care or love in a very long time.

She met his eye across the room and smiled meekly, then tuned back in. “So—any game suggestions for outdoor time?”

Immediately Lee’s hand shot up. “Can we play Sideways Monkeys?” he asked.

Natasha frowned. “Is that a real game, or a game you just made up?”

“It’s a real game…that I just made up.”

Clint and James both shrugged when she met their eyes across the room. “Well, maybe you can explain the rules and we’ll see if everyone likes it?” she suggested. While Lee explained semantics Natasha finished Jemma’s braid and tied it off. “Just like Katniss,” she whispered into the girl’s ear, squeezing her tiny shoulder.

The ending consensus was to give Sideways Monkeys a shot, so they all assembled in the yard to play—luckily far from Natasha’s spewed breakfast on the other side of the building. She stayed inside to do room checks while James and Clint supervised the game. No one liked doing room checks but her. The alone time was nice. Peaceful, even, once she got into the routine. Only every once in a while did she find something, like a pair of scissors someone forgot to sign back in.

Grant and his marijuana, though—that would have to be addressed.

The latex gloves were tight and hot and made Natasha’s hands dry out as she delicately went through every room, checking for “illegal contraband,” as the official employee handbook phrased it. Sounded like the kids were in fucking prison. Still, it was important they didn’t hurt themselves.

“Morning, Buddy,” she murmured to Grant’s goldfish. The little thing danced around its bowl, kept pristine by its owner with facility permission. Poor Grant had had to endure an hour-long interview before Garrett would sign off on it, as “practice for the adult world.” What a dick.

When she let herself into Skye’s room, it was to find six _stunningly scientific_ diagrams of penises taped to the wall above her bed. Natasha couldn’t help but laugh to herself. Going through the wardrobe, she leafed through the notebooks for any razors that might have been hidden between the pages. She knew all the tricks by now, even if not always by personal experience. Only when she turned to what must have been Skye’s most recent scribbling did she pause.

It was the face of a man, with deep black eye sockets and mouth gaping into a black and terrible scream, but instead of being illustrated in pen strokes he was crafted from tangled ones and zeroes. A computer program? Or a ghost in a machine.

Her hands were shaking again when she put the book away. His face somehow reminded her of the Leshy.

A great commotion pulled Natasha from room checks early, and when she ran outside it was just in time to see Grant being dragged from on top of Mike, whose lip was bleeding badly. She broke into a sprint without a thought, helping first drag Grant to a safe distance before demanding, “ _What_ _happened_?!” from the surrounding children. She knew that Mike would deny all involvement, Grant would _insist_ on his involvement, so eye-witness accounts would have to do.

Raina and Miles, who had broken from the game to jump rope, exchanged dark looks. Kamala looked like she was trying to blend in with the grass, and was actually doing a pretty decent job of it. When Natasha narrowed her gaze on Jemma the girl went white, then tipped her head at Mike behind his back. At least she wasn't defending the boy she had a crush on—then again, she had crushes on _all_ the boys.

“ _You_ , two minus-points. Inside where Clint’s gonna look at your face. _Now_.” She put on her Scary Ice Bitch voice, one step above her standard Ice Bitch, that sent kids scrambling for cover. Mike didn’t even try to protest as Clint guided him by the arm to the facility doors. Good. Sometimes being Scary Ice Bitch was worth it.

James and Grant were sitting on a bench off to the side of the play area. Grant's head was in his hands. When Natasha gestured to him James shrugged and waved her off. She shifted off to the side to watch the group while keeping an ear on their conversation.

For a long time their conversation was nonexistent. Then James sighed slowly. "Whaddya think you're doing, man?" he asked. Every syllable was carefully measured. "Assault, this close to getting out of here? That's just bonehead stupid."

"Maybe I'm just a _bonehead_." Grant's voice was muffled in the knees of his jeans. "Everyone else thinks I'm stupid anyway. What's it matter?"

"It matters because you gotta get out of here, not get your ass thrown in juvie," grumbled James, stretching his partial arm. "What, you think it'll be anything like this place? Nah, it's a shit-hole."

Grant muttered something Natasha couldn't hear and James shook his head. "Who says you gotta go back to those people? You're better than them, Grant. You're better than the whole stinking bunch of them put together and don't let anybody tell you different. You're stronger than them, you're braver than them, and you're a helluva lot smarter than them, too." He leaned in closer and muttered, "And _that's_ why you're done smoking that shit, alright?"

The boy's head shot up. He was appalled at being found out, but James just laughed. Watching them sit together on that bench, James's arm around Grant, Natasha felt her gut twist like there was a fist gripping her. James loved those kids with every piece of his heart, and they were not even his children. If he had one of his own, if _they_ had one...he would make a really good dad.

“You think Natasha’ll still cut my hair?”

“Sure, bud. I’ll talk to her.”

Fuck sneaking around and begging Clint to cover for her abortion. Fuck the Leshy, fuck what he did to her that made her so fucking scared. She was going to tell James that she was pregnant like it was good news, because it _was_ good news. They would do this and they would make it good.

For the rest of the day Natasha was on edge, as if anyone looking could read her thoughts and see what she was planning. To fill the hours once chores were done she sought out Skye’s room to check on how things were going there. The girl was on the bed, scribbling in her book with a deep furrow between her brows. "Someone's got their head in the game."

"Sure," Skye snorted. "You caught me; I'm writing High School Musical fan fiction. Sharpay and her brother are pulling a Lannister."

Pretending she understood a word out of any of that only required a feigned snort as she perched on the edge of the bed. "Mind if I hang out in here for a while? It's a little crazy everywhere else." Skye noncommittally grunted, all efforts at conversation ended, and after borrowing a few sheets of paper and a pen they both settled into writing.

“I like your pictures. Very informative.”

“Yeah.”

“You know, I used to do stuff just like that, but I had to print all my pictures at the school library.”

Skye snorted. “You’re old. Did you have to walk uphill both ways, too?”

“Mm, in the snow.”

They cast each other a look over their papers, and Skye might have even smiled a little.

“You know, I didn’t get along with my foster parents when I was your age. Or _any_ authority figure.”

“You were a foster kid?” asked Skye, frowning. “Dude.”

She shrugged. “Whatever. But I used to, uh. Write these really overdramatic diary entries about how much my life had changed because of them, and how I wished they would adopt me for real, and leave my diary lying around for them to find. My foster dad got all—well, he would get all teary-eyed every time. Then I would tell him it was just a _fiction_ project for my Language Arts class.”

Instead of looking up at the eyes she could feel boring into her, Natasha stared at her knees. “That’s fucking _cold_ ,” Skye said. She sounded impressed.

“It wasn’t funny.” She stopped writing and looked up once the knot in her chest had loosened. “Swap now?”

The girl smirked. “Hang on, just gotta write one more thing about how much you giving me that talk has changed my life.”

“Smartass.”

“ _That’s_ a minus-point.”

“Oh, no, a minus-point. But I wanted to play Nintendo later.”

Skye cracked a grin. When Natasha asked, "So, are you excited to see your dad tomorrow?" it dropped instantly. Her pupils blew out so wide that her eyes seemed to grow darker, and she looked back down at her sketchbook with a crooked shrug.

"Whatever."

Something cold and hard formed in the pit of Natasha's stomach at that look. She knew that look from somewhere. One of the past kids? One of James's foster siblings? 

The mirror?

There was no more getting anything out of Skye at that point, so Natasha showed herself out, moving slowly to accommodate how hard she was thinking about that shrug. To calm him down from the earlier episode, Natasha treated Grant with his haircut a few days before his birthday at James’s request. A bath towel was thrown around his shoulders as he sat in front of the big mirror, tense as Natasha shortened the sides but kept the top long, like "the moonshine guys in the 30s." 

He stared at himself for a long time when it was over, a hard gleam in his eyes. Several times he worked his jaw as if he was going to speak but couldn’t find the words. Then, just when Natasha was going to ask, he blurted out: “Is there a scar?”

"What?"

"A scar, is there a scar on my head? It’s where my-my brother hit me with a rake.“

Clint smiled, but there was a murderous glint in his eyes. "No way, man. No scars," he promised.

"No bumps?"

"None."

"It looks really good, Grant," vowed Natasha, her hands on his shoulders. He ran long fingers slowly over his head, checking that they were being honest. His eyes filled with tears and he put his head down on his knees. Clint slung an arm around him and waved Natasha off to give them a minute. 

She obliged them to find Jemma and Lee, see if James had spoken to them yet. He was still in the process, so Natasha hovered out of sight in the hall to listen. His voice was slow and calm as ever, trying not to spook their youngest charges as he asked them, "You guys understand _why_ you can't tell anyone what you heard, right?"

The inseparable pair simultaneously replied, "Not really," and, "No idea," which at least made James laugh.

"Natasha and I have been together for a long time. We went to the same high school and started dating right after we graduated, because we realized we didn't like being apart from each other. Me and Natasha, we—we help each other, you know? Like you two do."

"But we aren't a couple!" protested Lee, a little too fast. "Jemma and me, we're just—we're just _friends_. Ew."

"Ew?" asked Jemma archly.

"Well not-not like _ew_ ew, just...we're not a couple."

"Right, and I didn't mean you were," insisted James before Jemma could start in on Lee. "Natasha and I weren't either, not for a long time, but we...what I'm saying is that we need each other. And if Garrett found out about us, he might fire me. Nat's been here way longer, but I'm just kind of a scrub, right? And we don't wanna be separated, so we need to keep it a secret. Can you do that?"

There was a long stretch of silence. "I mean, of course we won't go _blabbing_ ," started Jemma, uncertain. "But I think a lot of the others already suspect. Should we try to convince them otherwise?"

_Please don't,_ Natasha begged silently. If Jemma tried to lie it would be the final nail in their coffins. 

"That's real nice of you, Jem, but you don't gotta lie. Garrett can't do anything with a bunch of rumors, and you two are the only ones who actually _saw_ anything. Heard it. Whatever. So can you promise you'll never tell, unless Natasha or I say it's okay?"

"Promise."

"We promise, Bucky."

"Okay. Thanks. Good talk. See you guys later."

Looking pained and weary but otherwise satisfied, he emerged into the hall. When they met eyes Natasha smiled at him and mouthed, _Thank you_.

He grasped her shoulder in passing. "You're welcome, _lapochka_."

He had never called her that before. By the time Natasha recovered from the surprise that made warm tendrils spread all through her body, Jemma was standing in the door of her room, one eyebrow raised and hands on her hips. "If you don't want the others finding out, you have _got_ to be more subtle," the girl loftily announced, then returned to her room to play with Lee and his porcelain monkeys.

That night, after a quiet drive home and scant dinner (she was too nervous to eat, and didn’t want to get sick on top of everything), they curled up in bed, exhausted. It had been a long day, made even longer by Natasha’s dawn bike ride to Baba’s house and the complications of Grant’s fight and Jemma’s secret-keeping, but Natasha was wrapped up in her thoughts and couldn’t sleep. She had to tell him tonight, before she was caught with her proverbial pants down again by morning sickness.

By the time she worked herself up to it James’s breath was slowing. “James?” she whispered. Her voice was barely audible around the anxious knot in her throat.

“Mm?”

Breathing was suddenly a chore, like trying to pull in air through a coffee stir-straw. “I…” _Just tell him, dammit!_ “We’re going to have a baby.”

He sucked in a sharp breath of air, arm tightening around her, and Natasha was terrified. She couldn't gauge his reaction like this, it was such a bad plan to spring it on him when he was about to fall asleep, why did she think waiting would help? It only made things worse. He was going to panic, leave her, _kill her_ —

The sharp inhale turned into a yawn accompanying a firm kiss to the back of her shoulder. "Love you so much, Natalia," he rumbled. Then he was asleep, leaving Natasha alone with her thoughts.

He didn't panic. He didn't leave or kill her. He was happy? At least that's how he seemed, but it was so difficult to tell like this. In the dark. She felt so alone, even with him curled against her. She thought she would be relieved. When she closed her eyes all she could see was Skye, that crooked shrug and hunted expression when Natasha brought up her father.

Sleep eluded her reach.


	3. Wednesday

Sam Wilson had never been this angry in his entire goddamn life.

"You can't do this, man, come on, it's barely been three months, he isn't ready!" he hissed furiously, trying to keep his voice down for the kids' sake.

In his room under four layers of blankets, Lee was screaming. The shelves and nightstand around his bed were empty. Jemma sat against the wall opposite him, hands clasped over her ears but refusing to leave him like this. It was better now than the first few minutes, when the boy was throwing everything he encountered until Grant came rushing and held him down. Now he just screamed and screamed and screamed while Sam fought for him and Steve tried to keep everyone else occupied by making them help with breakfast. 

Natasha and Bucky were running late, some kind of personal crisis. How the hell Garrett hadn't put two and two together yet was astonishing. Sam put his head in his hands. He liked the night shift. Most of the time all he had to deal with was abused kids wetting the bed and cleaning the rec room. Occasionally filling out an incident report. Nothing like this shit here. Dealing with therapists and the bull they put these kids through for the sake of _progress_.

Fucking progress.

——

“Had the weirdest dream last night.”

She was brushing her teeth at the bathroom sink, and James came up behind her to put his hand on her waist, wrapping around to the plane of her stomach. “Mm?” she hummed, unable to ask much else with her mouth full of toothpaste.

“Mhm.” He buried his nose in her shoulder and kissed her neck. “We were gonna have a baby. It was surreal, but nice, too.”

Natasha’s heart plummeted. She leaned forward to spit in the sink, then turned to face James with a frown. He smiled apologetically. Come on. This couldn’t really be happening. Telling him the first time was hard enough. Still. He had been happy last night, hadn’t he? What could really change about his reaction in the daylight?

“That wasn’t a dream.”

Now it was his turn to frown, to look like he’d been punched in the chest. “What?”

“I…” Oh, god, she couldn’t breathe. Her heart was going to burst out of her chest. This wasn’t fair, she did this already. “Last night. I told you last night. We’re…we’re going to have a baby.”

He stared. For a long time he stared at her. Then he sniffed hard, pressed his hand over her eyes, and nodded. “I, uh, just a second,” he stammered, and walked away. She heard him start to pace and shrank in on herself.

_You think I want your baby? You think one of them wants it? What did you think you were going to do with it? Bring it to one of their wives and make them raise it like their own? Stupid girl. Come here! We’re taking care of this._

Something fell with a crash in the other room and James cried out. “ _God damn it!_ ” Natasha’s whole body shuddered, clenched, and she leaned over the sink again to vomit. There wasn’t much to come up, at least, other than stink. She rinsed her mouth, pressed cool water to her face, tried to pull herself together and figure out what she was going to do. The appointment was still set for next Monday. As soon as James calmed down she would go out there and tell him, tell him it was a mistake, that they were going to fix it and forget this ever happened, that they didn’t have to—

There was another noise, now, softer than the crash and the shout. After a moment Natasha realized that James was crying. Softly, trying to hide it. She couldn’t leave him out there alone.

He was crumpled on the floor next to the sofa, like he tried to sit down and missed, eyes hidden in one hand as his whole body shuddered. When he looked up at her his eyes were rimmed with red and swollen. “James?” she asked uncertainly.

A picture they kept on the coffee table, of James and Natalia and Baba the day he was shipped out to Iraq, an arm wrapped around each of them, had been knocked to the floor. He swallowed hard. His voice shook with all the violence of a storm over a raging sea.

“How am I gonna hold the baby?”

Then she was on the floor with him, grasping his shoulders, practically shaking him to make his eyes meet hers. “What, you think having one arm’s gonna hold you back from doing anything you want?” she demanded weakly. “You think it’s ever held you back? I’ve seen you wrestle kids twice your size to the ground with that arm. One little baby, James, that’ll be easy!”

“It’s not the same,” he rasped. “It’s not the same. You gotta use both hands with a baby, you can’t pick them up with one hand, they-they need…”

She gathered him into her arms and held him, rocked him against her shoulder. “You are going to be _the_ _most_ _amazing_ dad,” Natasha insisted, her own fears and hesitations forgotten. “It doesn’t matter if you only have one arm. That just means when you figure out how to do it, you’ll be even better than the dads who have two. You’ll be such a good dad, James.”

After a few minutes he calmed down, but his hand kept a strong grip at her back. His shaky breath was warm against the side of her neck. “You’ll be a-a good mom, too,” he whispered.

“We’ll be great,” nodded Natasha, stroking back his hair. She didn’t know where all this confidence was coming from or if it was even real, other than being born of the need to comfort James. He was always so sure of himself until something reminded him what he lost overseas. As if losing an arm made him less of a man. But he was the best man she knew. The bravest, kindest, most patient and understanding man. He would be an even better father.

His hand left her back and brushed the front of her nightshirt. “Can I see?”

“Hm?” She looked down at his hopeful fingers, frowning. “You can’t tell yet.”

“Still.” He tipped his head, pleading, so she raised her shirt just to the underside of her breasts. Maybe she was a little bloated, which gave her lower stomach a little more curve than usual, but she was by no means showing. Yet James placed his hand there with reverence, and whispered that he loved her _so much_ , and where was this tenderness 10 years ago, when Natalia had needed it most?

James’s eyes widened when her face crumpled. “What’s wrong?”

She shook her head. “I’m just so happy I finally told you,” she insisted weakly, and hugged him again.

It wasn't the end of James's anxieties. When they tried to make breakfast he seemed suddenly hyper-aware of his missing arm, fumbling tasks that would have taken a second any other day and getting so frustrated he would cuss and throw things and cry. Natasha finally took the Forrester to McDonald’s in her pajamas just to get away from the tantrums. She loved him, but they both knew that he was the only person capable of really getting him out of this funk. Even without her bike Natasha was only good at escaping things that made her _feel_.

“Sam?”

“What’s up, Tasha?”

“I need you to cover for me and James. He’s—having a bad day. We’re coming in late.”

“ _Both_ of you? What, you think Garrett won’t notice that? Should I put up a sign? ‘Pay no attention to the sneaky people sneaking in late sneakily, using poor, innocent Sam as the decoy?’ Or maybe I should just wave my arms around and hope he doesn’t notice? We’re having a little bit of a crisis, here, you know, at your place of work? Where you get _paid_ to hang out with your boyfriend?”

She pinched the bridge of her nose. “James is having a meltdown,” Natasha explained, hating herself more with every word. “It’s—nothing serious, but he won’t be any good at work like this. I’ll deal with it and get him in, okay? Just cover for us. Garrett probably won’t even show up in the main building, but if he does come up with something and I’ll smooth it over later.”

“Yeah, that’s gonna go over _great_. Fine. Do your thing, I’ll see you soon. Hope Buck feels better.”

He hung up before Natasha could say another word. She sighed. Sam was one of the best people she knew, and she hated doing this to him, but it was necessary.

20 minutes later she was pulling back into the drive with an enormous bag full of greasy breakfast food. The smell alone was making her nauseous. When she stepped inside James was sitting on the kitchen floor, head in one hand, rocking in place. Natasha sighed and put the bag on the table. “Are you going to get up and eat?” she asked scathingly.

His head snapped up, eyes blazing in fury. “ _I have one arm, Natalia!_ ” he howled.

“ _Yes, I am aware, thanks!_ ” she screamed right back, hating when he got into a black mood like this. “Eat your fucking breakfast and get over yourself. Jesus. I got your favorite. Try mustering a little gratitude.” Natasha pulled out two paper plates and unwrapped the breakfast burritos, putting three on each of their plates, then wrinkled her nose at the stink and moved her third to the other plate.

By the time her first burrito was gone, James finally managed to drag himself into a chair. He stared at his food with an empty, angry look in his eyes. Natasha swallowed a bite too big and it all nearly came shooting back up at once. She pushed her plate away and put her head in her hands. She could feel James watching her. A moment later her body jerked like the kickback on a handgun, and she swung around to puke in the kitchen sink rather than all over their food.

James’s foot nudged hers under the table. “You okay?” he asked meekly.

Using all the energy she could muster with half-digested scrambled egg on her chin, she glared. “You are not the only one who is having a hard time with this,” she slowly and calmly said. 

He shrank in his chair. Good.

Natasha cleaned herself up with tap water, then pushed the remains of her breakfast to James’s side of the table. She was still hungry, but the smell of eggs needed to get the fuck out of her space. “James, you have to look at me now,” she firmly said.

After a nervous lick of his lips, James met her eyes.

“You think I’m not scared, too? I had about as fucked-up a childhood as you can possibly have. You were an orphan, and yeah, you have one arm. We’re both fucked up. But—we can do this. Okay? You’ve gotta believe that. I didn’t, but now I do, and even if I’m still freaked out, I feel a lot better about it.”

When she started, Natasha was convinced that she was lying through her teeth, but by the time she finished and looked James in the eye she realized she really did believe they could do good. Before, she only thought James would make a good father. But maybe dealing with his tantrum and juggling all the kids at Short Term Shield’s problems meant that she could be a good mom, too.

She suddenly missed Jemma very much. Jemma was so easy to please with Katniss braids and gluten-free waffles, she always made Natasha feel adequate. Now if she could just crack the other hard nut at the facility.

"It's Skye's birthday," she remembered after a few awkward minutes. "Think you can manage cupcakes while I make her present?"

James grunted. "Cupcakes twice in one week, the kids are gonna be thrilled."

"Hey, if it keeps them from trying to kill one another," shrugged Natasha. "Besides, I think Skye could use a little thrill in her life. She acts like the whole world kicked her dog or something. Which is weird. Like, she still lives with her parents, doesn't she? Why is she in foster care?" 

"Could just be unhappy. Mom and dad have too many rules."

She shook her head, remembering the hunted look in the girl's eyes when her father was brought up the day previous. "Something else." Something wrong, something bad that reeked of the Leshy.

Pulling a box of red velvet cake mix from the pantry, James glanced over at her with a faint smirk on his lips. "You know who she reminds me of?" he asked.

"Hm?"

"You, when we met. 'Cept she's a little more talkative. You barely spoke 10 words to me the whole first semester."

"I didn't need to say more; you talked enough for the both of us."

He laughed. Plugged in the electric mixer and set about cracking eggs into the bowl. Natasha retreated to the bathroom to brush her teeth, then the spare room where she kept her thread and beads, a tiny dance barre, spare notebooks and pens and drawing pads. With practiced swiftness born from years of needing to distract herself away from cutting, Natasha wove a bracelet for Skye using threads of white, black, and a single shock of hot pink. Between loops and braids she weaved beads spelling S-K-Y-E. 

Some small part of her—the one that knew exactly what angry young Natalia would have done to this kind of gift—desperately hoped Skye would like it.

By the time she finished the bracelet the cupcakes were finished. The frosting was a little sloppy but still perfectly edible. She reached for one and he tugged them out of range. "Hey! Don't be grabby!" he laughed. When Natasha pouted he produced another one from the cooling rack. "I made you one special. You think I'm a monster, not feeding my girl when she's doing some baking of her own?"

She took the cupcake, confused but smiling, until he put his hand back on her stomach. There was remorse in his eyes. James leaned forward and kissed her brow. "We both got heavy lifting to do now, and I'm sorry I didn't think about it that way sooner," he rumbled against her hair. "Just love you so much, Nata. Don't wanna let you or our little one down, you know?"

"I know. And you won't. You can't. You're my soldier."

His lips puckered into another kiss. "And you're _my_ hero."

They shared the special cupcake, then finally made the drive to work. All in all they were only an hour late walking in. While James vanished into the kitchen to hide the sweets Natasha craned her neck to peer around at everyone in the rec room. Jemma and Lee were missing. After sarcastically reminding Mike and Kamala to leave some space between them for the Holy Spirit, she turned down the hall toward Jemma's room.

"Nice to see you've finally decided to show up."

Shitshitshitshitshit.

"Hey, Garrett. Um. About that—"

Before she could pull an excuse out of her ass, Sam came charging around the corner. "Finally!" he barked. "Man, the line at CVS must've been a real bitch. Sorry, sir. I made Nat run to the pharm for, uh, some emergency, uh... _girl stuff_. Jemma's had a rough night. Is it in your car?"

God bless Sam Wilson. "Nope, I took it to the staff bathroom first thing," she ran with the lie. "Thought Jem might be a little more comfortable in the private stall."

"Good idea," nodded Sam before he turned back to Garrett. "Everything cool here?"

Garrett flashed her a white, artificial smile. "Did you _punch in_ before running that errand, Natasha?"

"No, sir."

"Well, it was a work errand, so you should probably just do a punch for your regular start," he told her, smoothing his tie. "If you don't mind moving along now, Grant Ward and I have our appointment. _Grant, come!_ ”

The boy’s freshly trimmed head popped up before he hurried across the rec room to meet Garrett. The facility director put an arm around him and they left together. Natasha didn’t like the weekly meetings Garrett had with Grant, Trip, and Raina, but it wasn’t like she had any _real_ say in the matter, was it?

Sam was staring at her, clearly pissed off. “So—thanks for that,” she muttered, looking at the ceiling.

“Whatever,” he grunted. “Listen, I’m glad that you and Bucky are good now, but we had a situation earlier and I really could’ve used your help.”

Jemma and Lee’s absence suddenly seemed to cleave a hole in her chest. “What happened?” she asked.

As he spoke, Sam started down the hall toward the boys’ rooms. “Lee’s therapist came by early, before I even made Kamala’s _suhoor_ breakfast thing,” he explained. “While the poor kid was sleeping, he took all of his monkeys.”

“No!” gasped Natasha. “He’s not ready for that!”

“Called it a ‘lesson in letting go,’” Sam said with a disgusted sneer to accompany the air-quotes. “When Lee woke up he had a total meltdown. I’m talking _hours_ of screaming. They were his mom’s, right?”

She nodded, speeding up the last few steps to Lee’s bedroom. After expecting total destruction, seeing his room in shambles wasn’t a huge surprise. The boy himself, though, was catatonic. Curled onto one side on his bed, at first Natasha thought he was staring at the wall. Then she realized Jemma was sitting on the floor, against the wall, looking into his eyes with tears streaming from hers.

"Jemma, you okay?" she called into the room. All Natasha _really_ wanted was to rush into that room, scoop up both of those kids, and carry them somewhere far, far away from all this pain. But she couldn't do that.

"I'm alright, Natasha." Jemma scrubbed at her face with one hand. The other was wrapped around her middle and holding tight, like it hurt. All the way across the little room Natasha heard it groaning. She hadn't eaten breakfast.

Alarms started going off in Natasha's head. Jemma had to eat. If she put off caring for herself to make sure Lee got through this, it might trigger a relapse. "Jemma, go with Sam to the kitchen so he can get you some breakfast."

"I don't want to, I want to stay—"

"It wasn't a suggestion, Jem. Go, _now_. I'll stay here until you get back."

Very reluctantly, she allowed Sam to guide her away. Natasha perched on the edge of Lee's bed, hesitant, like he might break or explode if she made the wrong move. "Hey, Lee," she murmured. "I'm so sorry. So sorry." She waited but got no response. "What's going on in that head of yours, Lee? Talk to me, bud. Talk to anyone. It doesn't have to be me, just say what you're thinking to someone you trust."

There was no indication that he had even heard her. His eyes were open but his body was limp, skinny arms and legs collapsed around a fluttering rib cage. Natasha's fingers itched, so she reached down and stroked his hair instead of scratching. His tear-swollen eyes closed slowly. Natasha kept an ear on the kids moving through the halls but didn't budge, stroking and stroking his hair, wiping sticky tears from pale freckled cheeks.

When Jemma returned Natasha held a finger to her lips; Lee had dozed off. They switched places so Jemma was practically cradling him like a baby. "I'll come back at lunch time," she whispered, and left them alone.

Skye was hovering in the hall, craning her neck to see inside Lee's room without being seen by its occupants. Natasha braced herself for the snark before asking, "Everything okay?"

"Floating on a cloud," retorted Skye with an irritable roll of her eyes. Then she nodded toward Lee's room. "Is he _done_ now?" 

Natasha put an arm around her shoulders and steered her back toward the rec room. "How about we play some games?" she suggested, then rose her voice for everyone to hear. "Considering it's _your_ _birthday_ and all, we should make it special."

Every head in the room shot up and Skye, so determined to keep them all at arms' length, went white.

"Bucky made cupcakes for everyone, and they're really good! And maybe instead of having outdoor time, we can do crafts and make cards for our new friend Skye."

She shot a look around the room until there were a few scattered and unenthusiastic, "Happy birthday," mumbles. Skye went from white to red and scowled, breaking free of Natasha's arm to slouch on the nearest piece of furniture. Trip smiled at her before diving back into his card game with Kamala. Skye looked both embarrassed and enraged by the small sliver of attention, and glared at Natasha like she'd just kicked her dog. 

"My dad's gonna be here soon, anyway," she muttered darkly.

"Then you better eat your cupcake!" James called as he entered the room with the cupcake caddy in hand. Everyone rushed at him. 

Over some of the shorter heads he shot Natasha an inquiring look. She shook her head. Now was not the time to start complaining, not when she'd only been in for an hour, even if she was already fed up and feeling stretched too thin. Lee was melting down, Jemma inconsolable, Skye insensitive, and she already _knew_ Garrett would be all over her later for coming in late, no matter what kind of show he put on in front of "the guys."

According to Skye, her father would be there any moment to pick her up. All he would have to do was show up, sign in, fill out the overnight visit forms, and take Skye out. Natasha brought Jemma and Lee their cupcakes. "This had better be gone when I come back," she warned Jemma then returned to the rec room to keep an eye on things.

Most of the cupcakes were gone now. Kamala had vanished to wait in her room until the tempting sweets were gone, so Trip shuffled over to sit beside Skye on the couch. Her cupcake was resentfully untouched on the arm rest next to her while she stared at the door. Her dad was scheduled to pick her up at one and it was 10 to noon. 

Natasha kept half an eye on Skye for her reactions as the time drew nearer. The girl had been tense the night before, but now she was a live wire ready to spring apart at the slightest provocation. Trip quickly gave up on trying to talk to her, and started a board game with Grant and Raina. Those three tended to gravitate toward one another a lot, their heads ducked and voices soft like baby birds.

"Natasha, I don't get this," a voice above her said. She turned and saw Mike a half-step away, clutching one of the books on his summer reading list.

It wouldn't be the first time one of the kids came to her for reading help. Usually whenever she was on break and the weather was fair she'd be caught at the picnic table with her nose in a book. When she was with the Leshy she read the books in his house to escape, and when she started high school she read to forget. James used to tease her about it and Clint pretended to hate reading because he was dyslexic, but Natasha didn't care. It was one of the few things she was good at.

She held out her hands for the sheet of short-answer questions. "Okay, let's bang it out."

They became so absorbed in themes of Doublethink and government conspiracy that Natasha hardly noticed time creeping past, or how agitated Skye was getting. She sank lower and lower in her place on the couch, until her chin was on her chest, breathing slow but hard as she watched the door. When one o clock crept closer, came, and went she started gnawing on her lip and tapping her toes. Her hands tangled in her lap. Only later would anyone notice she was carving the word 'WHY' into the flesh of her thumb with a fingernail.

Jemma emerged at half-two looking for a snack. "Ooh, are there still cupcakes?" she asked, seeing all the wrappers. “Is it someone’s birthday?”

In one fluid motion Skye stood up, shoved her cupcake forcefully into the other girl's face, and stomped out of the room amidst yells of surprise and shock. Jemma was screaming because there was frosting in her eyes. James and Clint, who had been trying to set up the GameCube in the corner of the room, came rushing over to help as Skye's bedroom door slammed shut.

"Shit," Natasha spat, fighting with the crumbs in Jemma's long hair. "Clint, you take care of this. Get everyone calmed down. Bucky, with me."

They marched down the hall and Natasha rapped sharply on Skye's door. "Skye, you know you can't have your door shut!" she shouted through the wood.

"She's a cutter?" asked James.

"Yes, she's a cutter."

" _I can hear you out there, you fat bitch!_ " Skye screamed.

Muttering, "Screw it," under her breath, Natasha grabbed the knob and shoved, only to be met with resistance on the other side. "Skye, stop blocking the door! iI you just open the door we'll leave you alone, you can have your little tantrum, and you _will_ apologize to Jemma later!"

" _Fuck you and that anorexic little cunt!_ "

"James, _help me!_ "

They both shoved against the door as one, forcing Skye back. As soon as they were clear in the room the girl was trying to spring past them, spitting in their faces and writhing when they grabbed her arms and forced her to the carpet. " _Get off me! Get off of me, you sick fucks!_ " She screamed at the top of her lungs right into Natasha's ear. Tears were streaming from her eyes, and between shrieked insults she was trying to hide sobs with drawn-out groans and whines of anger.

_What, you think someone will come rescue you? Stupid little child, there's no one to look! The investigation declared you dead after a month. One month! Were I in charge, I would not have given up so easily on a helpless child._

Skye felt like she had been abandoned. Natasha hated how much she could relate.

"You got her good, Bucky?"

" _Yeah, Bucky, you got me good?"_ Skye sneered, then hocked a huge wad of spit onto James's face. " _You want a little more? Cuz I got more!_ "

They met eyes over Skye's head. "Cool-down room," she said. "I'll take care of her. One, two—" As one they heaved to their feet, then started pulling Skye along to the cool-down room. She was standing on her own but still trying to halfheartedly break free.

By the time James left the girls in the padded room Skye was limp, curled on the floor and crying. Natasha nodded him off. He didn't necessarily _want_ to leave his pregnant girlfriend alone with the emotionally unstable teenager, but the worst of the tantrum seemed to pass, and if he said anything about it he knew he'd get chewed out. So he walked away, making a beeline for the staff desk in the rec room where Clint was filling out an incident report.

"I need that," he said with a jerk of his chin at the bottle of hand sanitizer at Clint's elbow. He held the bottle between his knees and pumped a palmful, then rubbed it on the spot where Skye's loogie had dried. _God_ , that was nasty. Who _did_ that?

Clint went back to writing, frowning intensely at the paper like it personally offended him. "Heard Sam's taken a…shine to your guy," he commented idly between scribbles. He couldn't write and talk at the same time, so he'd write a few words then say a few words, and it put long gaps in his sentences.

"Steve?" he replied while wincing at the sting. "I'm not surprised, he's a good guy."

"Seemed pretty shaken up…this morning, though," remarked Clint. "Think he can handle this?"

He nodded instantly. "Course he can. Steve's just got a big heart and nervous lungs; he gets shaken up, that usually means he'll work 10 times harder to look after these kids."

"Good," hummed Clint. "That's good." He crossed the Ts in his signature with a ferocious swipe.

In the cool-down room, Natasha waited nearly half an hour for Skye to tire herself out crying. She would be thirsty soon, too, which meant she'd make an effort to behave so Natasha would let her out. This wasn't her first rodeo, and yet her gut twisted as she regarded the girl. She looked so scared when she thought her father was coming, and yet was devastated when he didn't. Natasha used to have the same conflicted panic attacks. She was afraid what her parents would think if they found her, but every day they never came broke her heart all over again.

She put a soft hand on Skye's shoulder when she finally sat up. "I never gave you your birthday present. Would you like it now?"

Bloodshot eyes looked at her, puffy and wide and, for once, not glaring. "Mhm," Skye whimpered and nodded.

Natasha shifted and pulled the bracelet from her jeans pocket, offering it out beads-first. "So no one forgets," she quietly said.

Tiny fingers played over the S-K-Y-E of her name, and Natasha finally caught sight of the dried blood on her hand. The word _WHY_. Her heart twisted with guilt that she had snapped and subjected the girl to unwanted attention. If someone did that to her at Skye's age, she would have had a meltdown, too. Which was why, even though it might have been horrendously inappropriate, Natasha opened her mouth and asked: 

"Do you want to see mine?"

Skye looked up, confused until Natasha nodded to the shallow cuts and the blood under her thumbnail. "Sure," she whispered.

Before she could lose her nerve, Natasha stretched her legs out in front of her, tugged up her t-shirt and then the undershirt beneath, tuning out the gasp of _Holy shit!_ when the harsh white scars on her hips were revealed. Most of them were on her thighs or ankles, where they could be better hidden, but with the trend in low-riding jeans there were always a few peeking out above her waistband.

“Bye-bye, bikinis,” she said wryly. 

Her ears started ringing with mild panic as Skye leaned in to look closer. “Why’d you do it?” asked Skye. “You seem so… _normal_.”

That made Natasha laugh outright, if not quietly. “I am so far from… _anything_ resembling normal, Skye,” she replied. “But it’s—complicated. I lived with this person, and he. It. It’s just. Easier. Not to worry about the situation you’re in…when there’s blood. You have to focus on that-that pain, the urgency of the moment, and everything else just falls away.”

“I didn’t know you were a foster kid, too.”

She startled slightly. Skye was so quiet and looked so hurt—hurting for her, for _Natasha_ , not herself for once—it was like looking at her child-self in a mirror. Natasha nodded. “Yeah, I was. Actually, I lived here, for a while.”

“No way.”

“Yeah. I even stayed in your room. You know Steve, the new guy?”

“Uh-huh.”

“He was here, too.”

Skye looked ready to blow a gasket in her brain from all this new information.

“A lot of people work here for a reason. It’s important to us.”

"Huh. That’s…cool, I guess."

Natasha shrugged. "It's what it is. You think you're ready to go yet?" she asked, relieved when Skye nodded and got up. She tugged her shirts back down and rose, feeling heavy and awkward, weighed down by her scars and confessions.

When they reached Skye's room, her bed was covered in construction paper cards and flowers and happy faces. Skye froze in the door and swallowed hard. Natasha squeezed her shoulder.

"Take all the time you need. We'll be in the rec room. Bucky brought extra cupcakes in case of accidents."

First, a quick detour to the staff break room to gulp down a bottle of water and decompress. She could still hear everything happening in the rec room and was relieved to hear Jemma talking cheerfully with the others. No permanent damage by frosting, then. Good. She laced her hands around the back of her neck and rocked in place, trying not to get lost in memories of cutting herself in the Leshy's basement because it made her feel more alive than she believe she ever would again.

There was a quick rap on the entrance wall. "Nat, you okay?" asked Clint.

She picked herself up immediately, wiping all signs of distress from her face. "Fine, just a little _done_ with this day," she lied smoothly. "Whose idea was it to make the cards?"

One of Clint's eyebrows went up, and he smirked. "You'll never believe me, but it was _Grant_."

" _No_ ," Natasha said, genuinely taken aback. "He doesn't talk to anyone but Raina and Trip! Do you think he likes her?"

Grinning, Clint shrugged. "Well, he doesn't _hate_ her," was all he said before tugging her into the rec room. 

It had, apparently, been unanimously decided that it was too hot to play outside, so they would just have to play games in the building. That meant no competitive sports, no violent contact, only circle games and probably lots of excited yelling. First they played Big Booty, which Clint hated because it was confusing and James hated because it involved clapping. Then Rap Battle, which no one was particularly _good_ at, but they had fun. Only after Baby Talk and Sounds Off did everyone chill out enough to sit in a circle and play Truth or Dare.

Clint always picked dare, because he ate up the stupid shit those kids came up for him to do, like eat leftover pizza off the floor and jump off the roof ("It's the _low end_ , Natasha, come on!"). James and Natasha always picked truth, because even if they were little demons at coming up with dares, most of the truth questions included _Have you ever kissed _____?_ or  _Would_ _you ever kiss _____?_  

They went around the circle a few times, Clint licked a sofa cushion that hadn't been cleaned since the mid-80s, and just when she was about to call the game finished a voice said from the hall: "Natasha, truth or dare?"

It was Skye, obviously. There was a wicked kind of gleam in her eyes that usually came with a really crude dare, so Natasha chose truth.

The girl grinned like the cat that got the canary, and it felt like an ice cube slid down Natasha's throat to her belly. "How long have you and Bucky been _dating?_ " she asked slyly, to a chorus of _Oooooooh_ s from the rest of the kids. Clint was howling with laughter at the hunted looks on Natasha and James's faces as they glanced at each other, trying to communicate without actually saying anything.

This had to be nipped in the bud, _now_.

"Okay, guys, bring it in," James said, scooting the circle inward so they didn't have to raise their voices. Skye scrambled over and sat next to Ward so quickly she landed half in his lap; he went beet red and shoved her off. "I know you all think it's really funny, but Garrett can't find out we're a thing, okay? All he thinks is we're roommates, and if he hears we've been lying to him about us dating for the last _six years_ —"

"Are you gonna get married?" Kamala asked. " _Most_ people get married after six years."

" _Not going there_ ," Natasha insisted, ignoring giggles as heat rushed up her face. "Guys, guys— _focus_. Hands in, 'Don't tell Garrett’ on three. One, two—"

" _Don't tell Garrett!_ " the chorus whispered.

"Okay, everyone, let's break for chores before dinner," she sighed wearily as she got up. Before Skye could escape Natasha slung an arm around her shoulders and whispered, "You are _so_ getting a Happy Birthday song for that." Skye snorted and ducked out from under her arm.

When Natasha glanced across the room at James it was to find an odd, almost hungry kind of look on his face. She forced a smile, tucked a lock of hair behind her ear, and went to the kitchen to start dinner. Sam would be there soon. Where had the day gone? It seemed like she had been dealing with James's meltdown over impending fatherhood just an hour ago, and now the work day was almost over. She and James had tomorrow off for Baba's birthday party, business as usual Friday, and Saturday was Grant's birthday. He was going to move out on Sunday, and then what?

It was theoretically easy to stop caring about people who were no longer there, but in reality? When there was a real flesh-and-blood human out in the world who used to need them, probably still did, and there was nothing they could do...it was disheartening. With that in mind, while the oven was preheating, Natasha put down hers and James's cell numbers on an index card from the office. Grant had already been given a resource packet, but Natasha remembered how intimidating that had been, calling some stranger who had no idea what kind of situation she was leaving and asking for résumé help. At least this would give him a familiar safety net to fall back on if the real world proved too much for him.

Speaking of Grant...

"Hey."

"Uh, hey."

...and Skye.

"So. Happy birthday, right?"

"—Yyyyyeeeeeeeaaaaaaah?"

"Yeah. I, uh. Heard about what went down, with your dad. That's-that's bullshit."

"It was, yeah." Skye sounded taken aback. "You're next though, huh?"

"Huh?"

"Your birthday? It's on Saturday, right?"

"Oh! Yeah, right. Yeah..."

"Sucks that you have to leave, though."

“Oh. Yeah, it’s…yeah. But I was talking to Mr Garrett earlier, and he was—he was telling me how everything's gotta end sometime, and stuff. He's a good teacher."

Natasha bristled and continued chopping vegetables.

"—But anyway, since I'm leaving and all, I just...wanted to tell you that I think you're one of the most interesting people who's ever come through here. And I'm really sad we won't get to know one another better. I just wanted you to know that."

Tensing, Natasha put down the knife and shamelessly held her breath, waiting for what Skye would say to that. Grant was handsome, after all, she was legal, and most girls in the system had low enough self-esteem to eat up a compliment like that.

“Okay, thanks for letting me know," Skye said, and her footsteps slowly disappeared down the hall. Ice cold. 

Natasha couldn't decide if she wanted to throttle or congratulate the girl on not letting a confession like that sweep her off her feet before she had developed any real feelings. It took James five years of smooth lines and at least half a tour in Iraq before Natasha actually started to love him more than as her closest friend. Teenagers were fickle, their feelings inconstant and hearts too easily broken, no matter what kind of tough fronts or walls they tried to put up.

Still, Grant's sudden interest in anyone other than himself was curious, right? His niceness, too. Usually if he paid anyone attention it was Mike, and his voice was loud enough to shake the foundations. The only people he talked to, looking so equally skittish and lost, were Trip and Raina.

The only other kids in the facility to have mysterious weekly meetings with Garrett.

Suddenly filled with an inexplicable anxiety, Natasha lost all sense of time until Sam was coming in asking if she needed help. She jumped so bad the knife she was using to chop vegetables clattered to the floor, barely missing her foot. " _Sorry_ ," she blurted, kneeling to pick up the knife at the same time Sam did, his brow furrowed with concern.

"Everything okay?" asked Sam. "You look kinda freaked, Nat."

She shook her head. "All good, just tired. You scared me."

With one of those warm, apologetic smiles so true to his personality, Sam offered a hand to help her up off the floor, then wrapped her up in a hug that made a lump rise in her throat. "Looked like you could use one," he murmured, patting her back before he let her go. "How's Lee?"

Shop-talk helped. Natasha didn't have any solid foundation to base any kind of suspicion on toward Garrett, so there was nothing she could do about the sick feeling in her stomach when she thought about him alone with abused minors. For now. In the meantime, there was a building full of kids she _could_ help. She filled Sam in on Skye's meltdown and the cupcake thrown in Jemma's face. Skye still hadn't apologized to her knowledge, so Sam would have to deal with that after dinner or—

The AWOL alarm started blaring. Just like with Lee's halfhearted escape attempt on Monday Natasha sprang instantly to action. Every door alarm had a slightly different pitch, something only she had apparently picked up on, so she sprinted to the fire exit by the girls' rooms just as James was busting out through the front.

Skye was running like a bat out of hell, already halfway across the yard, backpack bouncing and hair flying.

"Natasha!"

" _Stay with the kids!_ " she shouted over her shoulder, not breaking stride. " _I'll call when I get her!_ "

After only two days without taking her bike to and from work, Natasha already felt like her leg muscles were suffering but forced herself to keep running, even as they burned all the way up her back. Skye was younger, which meant more natural energy, but also a lot lazier considering she was a teenager and it was summer. So, hopefully they would be pretty well-matched. She ran, throwing her fists out in front of her with every stride, lungs straining and stomach churning. They hadn't had an AWOL get this far since Clint's shit-story, and if they lost Skye when Garrett was so partial to the parents, it might mean her job.

" _Skye!_ " she called after eight blocks.

" _No!_ " the girl screamed back, though Natasha could see her strides beginning to falter.

"Skye, please, I feel like I'm gonna puke!”

The idea of how gross it would be to see her puke was probably what made Skye finally slow down and stop. “You can’t touch me!” she panted over her shoulder. “You _can’t touch me_ off the grounds.”

“I know,” gasped Natasha, stuttering to a stop and leaning over on her knees. “I can’t touch you, but—can I _walk_ with you?”

Skye paused for breath, tugging the sweat-sticky hairs from her forehead, then looked warily at Natasha. " _Fine_ , just keep your distance," she griped, and started walking. When she turned, Natasha spotted the bracelet she had made that morning on her wrist.

So they walked. A long way, almost to Natasha and James's neighborhood, and then veered to the left to a bus stop. Skye pulled a battered bus pass from her backpack and Natasha scrambled in her pockets for change, relieved to find that her change from McDonald's that morning was still rattling around. They took the northbound 6, Skye sitting and Natasha standing a few feet away in the aisle, feeling carsick. She hoped James and Sam had the good sense not to tell Garrett why the alarm went off.

It had just been approaching dusk when Skye made her escape, and by the time she hopped off the bus with Natasha on her heels night had fallen. Both of them were dragging their feet, exhausted, the last two blocks before Skye turned in toward a house.

"Skye," Natasha warned her, knowing whose house this was without asking. "You know you aren't supposed to be here. Come back with me and we can—"

The girl kicked the welcome mat aside, picked up the spare key, and vanished into the house. Natasha stared, watching lights go on. After a few moments she pulled out her phone to call James.

"Finally!" he answered. "You get her?"

"Kind of. She went to her parents' house, but I don't think anyone's home. No car in the drive, no lights on. I think you better head over. This might not end well." The last thing anyone needed was another meltdown today. Natasha was so tired she could have laid down and fallen asleep on the gravel driveway.

20 minutes after giving James the address, Skye came trudging out. She slammed the front door behind her, locked it, stowed the key again, and dropped to sit on the front stoop, head in her hands.

Natasha crouched in front of her. “No one's home?” she asked quietly.

Skye shook her head without lifting it.

“I’ve got a ride coming. Think you might wanna head back? We can drop you on the way.”

She nodded, sniffling. Natasha reached forward to put a hand on her shoulder. Stroke her back. Remind her she wasn’t alone.

“Okay.”

It would be a while before James arrived. Without having to be asked Skye scooted over to let Natasha sit beside her. She wrapped her arm completely around the girl's shoulders in a half-hug. There were cicadas hiding in the dry, crunchy grass and a coolness to the air that betrayed how close they were getting to autumn. Soon enough the facility would be near empty during the day and a madhouse at night.

She still remembered dreading coming back after school. Hating everyone because she convinced herself everyone wanted something from her. She didn’t yet know how to be _Natasha_ , still trapped in her past, in _Matryoshka_. Matryoshka didn't have friends. Matryoshka didn't have family. Matryoshka was the corporeal figure of Natalia's ghost.

Skye looked how Natasha felt when that front started to crack apart.

"Hey," Natasha murmured, swallowing past the knot in her throat. "You can talk to me, okay? I think I know how you feel. It's—it's like you're mad at them, right? They hurt you, but you still love them."

"Like a dog," moaned Skye. "Right? I'm like a fucking _kicked_ _dog_. Keep bringing Master his slippers even though all you'll get is a slap in the face."

_No_ , Natasha thought, horrified by the metaphor. _You're like an abused kid._

There were no allegations of abuse in Skye's file. No mysterious bruises, no pleas for help, but here she was, crying, calling herself a kicked dog. If her parents were prominent figures in the community, though, they could have scared her into silence. Threatened her. Told her that no one would ever believe her. Any number of things shamed abused children into silence every day.

"Skye," Natasha slowly said, her voice barely more than a whisper. "Do your parents hurt you? Your dad? Your mom?"

The Forrester's headlights bloomed at the end of the street, creeping along like James was trying to read house numbers. Skye slid out from under Natasha's arm and looked down at her. Her brows were furrowed, her jaw grit tight, fresh tears pooling in her eyes. She shrugged. "My mom hasn’t been here for a long, long time. What do you want me to say?" she asked.

"The truth," retorted Natasha, standing with her. They were nearly the same height.

_Beep-beep_. Natasha waved at the car but didn't move, even as Skye slouched down the drive toward it. She couldn't just let this go, not if there was a sad and lonely girl possibly being abused by the people who were supposed to care for her. Not if there was something she could do to shield her from further suffering. She had been forced to save herself—no one deserved to go through that alone.

She climbed into the passenger seat with a sigh. James reached over to squeeze her shoulder before putting the car in gear. "You gonna escort her in?" he asked.

"Yeah," nodded Natasha. "I have to get something from the office anyway."

Once Skye was securely settled in her room Natasha crept into the office. She brushed off Sam's questions and started scribbling out a note to Garrett, ears buzzing.

_G—_

_Put hold on M. Poots' parent visits ASAP.  
_ _SUSPECT ABUSE._ _  
__Call Soc Worker @ 8am  
_ _Will follow up on Fri_

_—N_

She pushed the note through the mail slot in Garrett's door, gnawing the inside of her cheek and hoping, just this once, that he would take her seriously.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I forgot to mention last chapter--Baba is basically Red from Orange is the New Black, but a little nicer and not in federal prison.


	4. Thursday

She woke up to a kiss on her brow and a handful of Saltine crackers.

"I looked it up online," James whispered, stroking her hair back. "Nibbling on them as you get up is supposed to help with the puking."

Beautiful man. "I didn't know we had crackers," mused Natasha as she took a tiny bite of a corner.

James blushed. "We didn't; I got up early and went to the store."

Beautiful, wonderful man.

He crawled back into bed beside her, hand splayed on her middle and eyes buried in her shoulder. With her free hand, Natasha reached up to stroke his hair. Thank god they devoted almost the entirety of one of his army pension checks for central AC last summer, or it would have made mornings like this rare. She loved touching him. His skin wasn't as soft as hers but it was less blemished. It was hard for him to wash his hair with a standard bottle, so more often than not he used hers because of the pump top. It made his hair soft and fragrant. He was always warm, too. When he draped himself over her at night in the dead of winter he was better than any blanket.

" _Your toes are fucking cold_ ,” he grunted into her shoulder.

She laughed and kissed his head. _I love you, too_.

Baba’s birthday party was that afternoon, and by some stroke of luck they both managed to get the entire day off. They had time to sleep in, to go out to breakfast, have a date day. It had been too long since they had one of those days. 

Usually they had more time during the school year, when there weren’t kids around during the day. They could actually take hour lunches outside the building. Most of their time at the facility during those days were spent cleaning and doing paperwork. No tantrums, no violence, no screaming. At least not until the thing in her belly came out, anyway. That was going to be a whole world of disaster on its own.

Natasha finished the crackers with the fingers of her other hand tangled in James’s hair. He had fallen back to sleep, so she rolled over and joined him. Those crackers really did the trick.

***

After the mess with Lee the morning before and what he heard of Skye’s meltdown later on in the day, Steve wasn’t about to let himself be caught off-guard again. He was covering for Bucky’s absence and a city social worker was coming in soon to talk to everyone about all the drama. However, while Sam was still there, Steve made himself useful by secluding himself in the office, reading up on all the kids. He had to know what he was getting into so he could better help them.

Leopold “Lee” Fitz: while he was away at some kind of genius summer camp last summer, Aaron Fitz shot his mother and then himself. Lee’s fixation with the porcelain monkeys came from his mother, who had been collecting them for years. They were the only things the boy took with him when he was allowed into the house.

Jemma Simmons: a well-intended incentive program gone terribly wrong. Her father was teaching back home at Oxford with the family’s eldest daughter, and Jemma’s mentally-unwell mother was placed in charge of Jemma and her little brother Jeremy. Without her husband’s supervision Georgiana went off her meds and started “motivating” her children into better grades at school by withholding food. As time progressed it dissolved to putting locks on the fridge and kitchen cabinets for days on end. After almost a year Jeremy went into renal failure and died. Jemma was taken from the home but retained the psychosis to starve herself as punishment for poor behavior.

Grant Ward: not a long story, just a sad one. He grew up in some kind of survivalist encampment up north, out in the middle of nowhere. His parents were both firm believers in the belt and the rod being the best teachers. Grant’s older brother was treated like a king and encouraged to help discipline his little brothers. When all three boys were taken by the state they were intentionally separated because they attacked one another so often. Grant was prone to long silences and sudden fits of violent anger, but testing didn’t indicate mental illness or psychosis.

The list just kept going on and on, one sad story after another. Steve didn’t understand how there could be so much misery in this one small county. Sure, he had his share of trouble; he lived in this facility most of his childhood, spent several years there with Bucky visiting every weekend, and knew Natasha for the few weeks she stayed there before being moved to a foster home. But that didn’t make any of this easier to swallow. Then at the end of the list, their most recent occupant:

Mary Sue “Skye” Poots: A run-of-the-mill problem child. Despite what looked like a loving home and devoted parents, Skye had a track record the length of her arm and behavioral problems a prison inmate would envy. After repeated runaway attempts and self-harm reports from a school nurse the police finally picked her up and decided she needed some kind of disciplinary structure, but hadn’t committed any actual crimes to result in juvenile detention.

How did kids just _grow up_ bad? That didn’t make any sense. Furthermore, Skye never actually did anything. She never shoplifted like was common to see in troubled kids. Never got into violent fights at school. Just ran away. Just hurt herself. But why do any of those things if she had a good home life? It wasn’t the best way to get back at her parents, but it was a good way to get _away_ from them.

And then yesterday. Yesterday she threw a cupcake into Jemma Simmons’ face and threw a tantrum to end all tantrums because her dad didn’t show to pick her up. A girl who spent all her time with her parents trying to get away, suddenly consumed by grief when they didn’t try to get her back. Didn't want her anymore.

Steve put his head in his hands. He liked doing good things and giving back to his community, but he hadn’t anticipated things would get so hard so fast. 

And it wasn’t like Garrett was exactly the role model the old facility director had been. Nick Fury was scary as hell but he knew how to guide troubled children toward an optimistic future. Garrett only showed interest in a few kids at a time, according to Sam, and no one knew what he said to them in their private sessions. It rubbed all the staff the wrong way, but they were worried about losing their jobs if they spoke up and it turned out to be nothing.

“Knock-knock, you okay?” asked Sam in the door.

He looked up. “Hey,” he replied wearily. “All good here, just doing some homework. The social worker here yet?”

“Just got here. He’s setting up in the rec room; should be a good time. He seems a little, uh…” Sam made a jerking motion with his head and shoulders.

“Jumpy?”

“Yeah, sure, let’s go jumpy. Nervous, like. Fluffy, though, so that’s fun.”

“Fluffy?” Steve frowned. “Like his hair or his, you know… _size?_ ”

Sam laughed. “His _hair_. Come on, get in the game so I can go home.”

“Alright, alright…” Adjusting the hearing aid in his left ear, he climbed out of the uncomfortable office chair and headed for the rec room where everyone was assembling. 

Damn if Sam wasn’t right about the fluffy thing, too. The social worker sitting in Natasha’s usual spot had soft brown curls springing from his scalp, wire-rimmed glasses, and a lopsided smile that looked like residual nerve damage. Steve had seen it before on stroke victims when he worked at the old folks’ home.

“Some of you know me already from past visits—hi, Grant—but for those that don’t, my name is Bruce Banner. I’m a social worker. I’m here to talk to you all about, well, anything that’s on your mind.”

“Is this because of me?” asked Skye darkly, glaring from her corner of the room. “Because I apologized to Jemma last night and she said it was water under the bridge, so I don’t think—”

Banner put a hand up. “This isn’t about any particular incident, I promise. I come in every few months to check on everyone regardless; my visit may just coincidentally have lined up with something going on here. No one is in trouble. This is your opportunity to tell me how you feel about, well, _anything_. If there’s anything you think this facility can improve on, if you’re being treated with respect, if you’re getting along with everyone, things like that. 

“I thought we could start with a group discussion to get out our feelings about living here, and through the day I’ll take a few minutes with each of you for more personal needs. That sound good?”

There were halfhearted murmurs of assent around the room and Bruce smiled his crooked smile again. Steve waved Sam off and took an open seat on the sofa. He could handle this. A nice, calm day with a trained professional helping out. This would be good.

He shifted and frowned, feeling a lump under the cushion he sat on. Trying not to be too conspicuous, Steve reached back to find whatever was there. Probably a tub of Play-doh or a lost TV remote. But his hand closed around something smooth and too cool to be plastic. It felt porcelain.

A little porcelain monkey sat nestled in his palm when he looked down. His heart jumped.

Fitz was still relatively immobile. He’d been coaxed into eating last night, even if he pecked at it like a sad little bird. Otherwise, he wouldn’t leave his room or get out of bed. Steve excused himself from the rec room and padded into the tiny bedroom, crouching at the boy’s side.

“Hey, big guy,” he said softly, to no response. “I brought you something, but you gotta promise to keep it safe, alright? Here you go, buddy.” Steve pulled the monkey from his pocket and set it on the bedside table. Lee’s eyes flickered impassively over it, first, then widened. His hand slowly, so slowly, reached for the table and closed, trembling, around the figurine. When he held it to his chest and shut his eyes again, Steve took that as his cue to go.

It was going to be okay.

***

“How do you think you like it here so far?” asked Bruce. “Is everything okay?”

“Oh, _yes_ ,” Jemma immediately replied. “I really like my room, and we don’t have to go outside every day if it’s too hot, and everyone’s been really, very nice so far.”

Bruce blinked, tipping his head to look at her. “Even Skye?”

She nodded. “She wasn’t lying when she said she apologized. It was really nice of her. We hugged!” Her smile was so wide and earnest Bruce might have even believed her. Then again, he was fairly certain she had herself convinced, too. Denial was common, especially in people who thought they had it “too good” to be depressed.

“How about we discuss the incident with Lee yesterday, is that alright?” Bruce suggested.

Jemma’s face fell.

“You two are very close.”

“Y-yeah.”

“So seeing him like that must have been upsetting, right?”

“Of course it was.”

Nodding, Bruce made a note in his little book. “And, uh, were you the one looking after him, Jemma?” he asked. “Making sure he ate and stayed hydrated?”

Jemma immediately started to fidget, like she’d been caught lying before the fib even left her lips. “I mean…” she started uncertainly. “Sam was there when it happened, and I love Sam, he’s wonderful. And when I had to go have breakfast—they have to watch me eat, to make sure I don’t throw it away or make myself vomit it all up afterward—Natasha had shown up by then. Natasha’s the best, everyone loves her. She braids my hair every day, I don’t even have to ask and it’s just like Katniss. Anyway, she sat with Lee while I was eating, and by then he was, you know, really calm, so I brought his breakfast and insisted that they go look after everyone else, and I would make sure he ate for them.”

“And did he eat?”

“A-a little.”

“What do you think you would have done if he hadn’t eaten, Jemma?”

“I-I…” she stammered, wringing her hands, looking trapped.

Bruce back-pedaled. “You’re not in any trouble here, Jemma,” he assured her. “I’m just trying to make sure the staff were doing their jobs.”

“They _were!_ ” she cried in distress. “Sam and Natasha and Bucky and—they’re all _really_ _good!_ The only person we don’t like is Garrett, but we don’t see him often enough to care.”

Frowning, he made another note. “Garrett, he’s the facility director, right? I’ve never actually met him. What’s he like?”

“Mhm. He’s…weird. He smiles too much.”

Coming from the girl who paused halfway through sentences to smile, that had to say something. “Does he make you feel safe when he’s around? Comfortable?”

She shrugged. “He doesn’t make me feel _un_ safe or _un_ comfortable?”

“If you had to guess, do you think the other kids feel the same way?”

"More or less, yeah.”

After a few moments of more scribbling Bruce nodded to himself. “Okay, that does it. Thank you so much Jemma. Do you feel okay? I hope I didn’t ask too many questions.”

“No, no, it was really nice! Thanks, Doctor Banner!”

“I’m not—” Why did everyone call him that? He was a social worker, not a doctor. “Okay. Take care, Jemma.”

She practically skipped out of the room, ponytail bouncing (no one but the famous _Natasha_ , apparently, knew how to tie her Katniss braid).

Throughout the interviews, talking to everyone privately in the office, Bruce learned several things. Firstly, despite the fact that she could be “a little bit of a bitch sometimes,” Natasha was universally liked. Bucky and Sam were the favorites. Everyone tended to forget about Clint, he was so quiet and so partial to remaining on the fringes of the room rather than participating in group activities. Steve was too new to form a solid opinion, but most feedback was positive. 

And Garrett…they weren’t afraid of him, per se, but there was something going on behind the scenes that made Bruce wary. Grant, Raina, and Trip were the only ones to sing his praises, and it was done more with the forced air of obligation rather than any real emotion. Raina almost _cried_ , but that didn’t fit the kind of genuine emotion Bruce was seeking. No one liked him. No one disliked him. And he smiled too much.

People who smiled too much, _noticeably_ too much, fit into a subconscious body language category called the Idiot’s Grin. People, especially kids, were very receptive to fake smiles. Either they were smiling to cover up anger, stifle frustration, or lie while retaining an image of innocence. Smiling at every little thing as a reflex developed more often in women, but it wasn’t unheard of in more nervous people. But no one said he seemed nervous by nature. 

So what would a guy like Garrett have to hide?

“Hey, uh, it’s Steve, right?”

The new staff was lean but tall, and didn’t immediately respond when Bruce spoke. He would have been offended if he hadn’t spotted the hearing aid. Only when he shifted on his feet did Steve notice him and turn, looking stunned. “Oh! Someone _was_ there, sorry, sometimes I get this _whooshing_ —”

Bruce waved it off. “That’s fine. I just wanted to ask—if I want to leave a report, who's directly above you? Garrett didn't hire you, did he?" he asked.

"No, that was Natasha, actually," Steve replied easily. "I guess she's in charge of line staff, since she's been here longest, knows the kids best, and Garrett, uh—doesn't like to deal with that stuff." At Bruce's puzzled look, he went on: "Sam and them, they say that he doesn't like being too hands-on with the day-to-day stuff, that he, uh..." His ears reddened. "When he promoted Natasha he told her it was the kind of work that needed _a woman's touch_. Not to say Natasha _isn't_ good at it, but—seems a little, uh...you know."

"I understand," nodded Bruce, making a quick note. "What do you think of Natasha as an employer?"

A timid but warm smile crept across Steve's face. "Oh, she's—she's great," he said. "Really fair, but she knows how to quiet a room full of screaming teenagers, too. And like I said, she's great with the kids. She's good at getting in their heads, figuring out how to get them to open up. I knew her in high school, actually—we were kind of in the same circle. But you never would have guessed when she was interviewing me. God, it was brutal."

"Well, at least she isn't biased."

"Right?" Steve agreed, laughing. "But she's so professional about it. She doesn't even treat her _boyfriend_ any different."

Only when Bruce frowned did Steve seem to realize he might have said something wrong. “Natasha’s boyfriend also works here?”

Steve’s mouth gaped for a moment as he scrambled to think of something. Finally he deflated. “Yeah,” he admitted. “But—they were together for a _long_ time before they started working here. Already knew they could get fired if they were caught, so they-they figured out how to keep it all professional. They’re never touching or kissing or doing _anything_ like that on the grounds, _ever_. Scout’s honor. _Please_ don’t report them to Garrett. Or tell them I told you.”

“It’s not my job to report it to Garrett,” replied Bruce slowly. “I'm just trying to get an idea of how this place operates. That’s all. If I thought fraternization might interfere with the goings-on of this facility, I would report it. But it seems like you guys have a pretty good handle on things, so far. I’ve got a few more interviews before I head out, but—look, don’t sweat it, okay? Hey, and have Natasha get in touch with me about the Open House in October.”

“Sure, Doc.”

“I’m not—yeah, thanks.”

He bid his goodbyes that afternoon with little to no fuss. Grant and Mike were the only two there long enough to remember his last visit. The agency that hired him tried to keep a rotation going so the visits didn’t seem so dreadful to the line staff. This way, it was just a surprise visit by a (usually) friendly stranger. 

Bruce didn’t go back to the agency to file his report; no one would notice its absence and he was tired, so he headed straight home. Unfortunately, “home” was with an old college friend and s certifiably insane genius who tended to make the house smell like smoke bombs on a semi-daily basis. At least once a week, for sure, but usually closer to four or five times. How could one human produce that much stink when they didn’t even work with chemicals? Some of life’s questions just didn’t have to be answered.

"Tony, I'm home."

“Honeybear number two!” Tony called from the kitchen. Bruce didn’t dare go back there; it would probably smell like motor oil or engine grease or something similarly disgusting. Tony was an engineer and Rhodes was training supervisor of the army base camp a few miles south. Not a bad gig, though Bruce had the smallest salary of the three by far. Rhodey was, clearly, Honeybear number one. “Did you inspire young minds today, Doctor?”

He threw his briefcase at the wall.

***

They had a nice day.

Breakfast was at Denny’s, where they split a vanilla milkshake like teenagers. Except it wasn’t in the cute one-glass-two-straws way, more like snatching the glass out of one another’s fingers and gobbling a few spoonfuls, only to have it stolen back again minutes later. Then they went on a walk through the city park, which was a weirdly big deal because James didn’t like when people stared at his left arm. And they inevitably did. But he was making an extraordinary effort to make it a good day off, at least for her. They went to the free Art in the Park sculpture garden, and when they got home to get ready for Baba’s party he let her pick the music. 

“Seriously?” she asked, smiling incredulously. “You hate my music.”

James looked down at the floor, the corners of his mouth curling up. “Whatever you want, _lapochka_ ," he said, for perhaps the fiftieth time that day.

The Swan Lake soundtrack accompanied them as they showered and dressed. Natasha loved listening to ballets while she prepared for a night out; it made her feel like a movie star on her way to a shoot. When she told James he laughed, but then later said it made _him_ feel like a secret agent in a Tarantino movie prepping for an undercover mission.

“So what’s the mission?” she asked lightly.

He grinned at her from the bed, folding his left sleeve at the elbow and pinning the cuff to his shoulder. “I think…I’m bodyguard to a Bolshoi ballerina who’s guarding a terrible secret,” he decided, taking his time to chew over each word as he stood. “She, uh—stole the dead Czar’s…jewels.” 

“His jewels or his _jewels_?” Natasha snorted, grabbing at the crotch of her dress.

James laughed so hard he had to sit down again and wipe his eyes. “Those jewels, _definitely_ those jewels,” he chuckled, reaching for her waist to pull her in close. He kissed her shoulder, because it was the highest he could reach, then leaned down and kissed the fabric covering her stomach. “What do you think, should we tell Baba about the baby tonight? Good birthday present?”

“But we already _got_ her a new bath robe,” she pointed out, combing fingers through his hair, wondering why she felt suddenly like scratching all the way down under her skin and pulling herself out into the air. “And we should probably—you know, wait a while. In case anything happens. And, come on, do you really wanna steal the spotlight on her big day?”

"No, I guess you're right," he admitted. "How far along do you think you are, anyway?"

She shrugged. "Hard to say. I think less than three months for sure, but after that it had to just be a bad condom, right? So we can't really guess a specific date until I get to a clinic." The look on his face said he thought maybe they _could_ , but he didn't press to avoid making her feel guilty. Sure, their sex life wasn't as insane as other couples their age, but Natasha didn't see an issue with it like he did. She _liked_ having sex, only the act brought other things to the surface with it.

"So, a few more weeks until we can tell people," he nodded. "That's what they say, isn't it? Wait until three months to tell people?" When she nodded he added: "Should we find some kind of doctor for that stuff soon?"

“We will, just not this week,” replied Natasha, pulling out of his grip so he wouldn’t see how her face was closing off, shutting down and away from this whole conversation. She had to get him to calm down and stop asking questions or she would swallow the knot in her throat and choke. “With everything that’s been going on, it’ll be better to wait at least until we’ve got Grant situated. Then there’s Lee’s mental state to consider, and _God help us_ if Skye sticks around much longer...but we'll figure it out. Always do, right?"

He hummed and started combing his hair. "Sure do.”

The drive to Baba’s was brief but quiet. Comfortably so, with her hand on his knee and a tight smile on his lips every time he glanced across at her. They listened to a washed-up country star sing about having the blues while bicycles streaked past the windows. If it wasn’t tacky Natasha would have been more excited to get her bike back than she was for the party itself. Poor Liho was probably lonely without her. And she had Jessica's clothes to return.

“You feeling okay?” James asked when they were nearly there.

“Yeah, I’m good.”

“Okay. Just let me know if you have to leave early, alright?”

“Sure, sure.”

“—I mean, I hope you _don’t_ but if you start feeling sick…”

She sighed. “James, I will tell you. I’m not going to be sick 24/7 just because I’m pregnant. You do understand that, don’t you?”

He glanced at her and smiled; his closed lips turned white. “Okay, Nata, I get it,” he assured her. At the next traffic stop he squeezed the hand on his knee. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

“Okay.”

There was already music spilling out of the house when they parked in the street. People were milling around in the side yard behind the fence, drinks in hand, all of Baba’s wards or their spouses and children. The house would be crammed inside with people, none of them really related to the old woman and yet just as dear and devoted as her own babies. 

Natasha wished, not for the first time, that she had been in some way under the woman’s charge. Her foster parents hadn’t been _bad_ by any means, but they both came from whole families. They didn’t understand the same loneliness that came from leaving the country of one’s birth and living alone in a foreign land. They had never known horror like living in the Leshy’s basement for seven years, made into something as monstrous as the _Matryoshka_. They lived their white-bread life and she lived hers. She wondered sometimes if the Coulsons were still around. It had been a while.

James squeezed her hand again once the car wasn’t running. “Ready?” he asked, smiling shakily.

She reached across and smoothed the worry lines around his eyes, frowning. “What’s going on with you?” He was acting oddly, had been all day, and she had to get to the bottom of it. Maybe that exact moment wasn’t the best time, but she had to.

“Nothing, Nata, nothing. Just—thinking about a house full of people, doing double-takes all night when they see this.” James gestured with the amputated arm inside his meticulously pinned sleeve.

“Hey,” she murmured, shifting her hand to the back of his neck to give his nape a reassuring squeeze. “Only reason anyone’s going to be double-taking is because you look so handsome, alright? Come on, it’s your mom’s birthday, let’s make it nice for her.”

He shook his head, staring down at the steering wheel with his mouth puckered into a hard line. “It’s not my _mom’s_ birthday,” James whispered.

“She’s not _replacing_ your bio-mom, James, I just mean— _she_ raised you, didn’t she?” asked Natasha, squeezing his shoulder. “ _She_ took care of you when you were sick, _she_ put you through school and made sure you graduated, _she_ sent you care packages when you were overseas. You don’t have to limit yourself to having just one mother your whole life.”

“Is that why _you_ treated _your_ foster parents like _shit_?” snapped James, slamming a hand down on the wheel. Natasha flinched and turned to stare determinedly out the window, anywhere but at James. “I don’t want to talk about this right now, Natalia. Come on. Like you said, it’s my—it’s Baba’s birthday. Let’s just try to have a nice night, okay? Are you listening to me?”

The knot was back in her throat, so big and hard that only air could get past it.

_Are you listening to me, Matryoshka? Look at me! Stupid little whore, do you even speak English? I said: Open. Your. Mouth. That’s right. You be a good girl and I’ll be good to you, too. Good girl. Good girl. Keep going or I'll fucking kill you..._

“Natasha?”

She nodded and climbed out of the car.

The moment she opened the front door she was slapped by a wall of solid sound. Music, chatting, laughter, calls across the room, people everywhere, children running on the stairs. It took everything in Natasha’s power not to bolt. She didn’t dislike people, per se, but being around too many of them at once when she wasn’t in a position of authority made her feel sick and grumpy. And she _already_ felt sick and grumpy, so this was really just fueling the flames. But after a frantic moment a familiar face melted free of the masses, and Jessica Drew pulled her into a hug.

“Natasha! Ohmygod, how are you? Did you get in trouble for being late the other day? Did my pants fall off your skinny butt?” Jessica asked in a rapid-fire staccato squeal.

She held out the bag of clothes with an amused huff, shaking her head. “Thanks, Jess,” Natasha said, too tense to say much. “Washed those for you.”

“Thanks!” beamed Jessica. Natasha wondered if her face ever hurt from all that smiling. “So guess what? I talked to my social worker last week, and he brought over my daughter this morning! She gets to be at the party! Do you wanna meet her? I named her Miriam, after my mom, except her name was Merriam, and that’s like the _dictionary_ —”

James was a sudden quiet presence at her back. “Maybe later, Jess,” he said warmly. His hand closed around Natasha’s shoulder, hugging her against his side as he guided her around the front hall into the guest bedroom, where everyone was leaving the jackets they brought in case of rain. “Can I talk to you for a sec before we get into it?”

She sat on the edge of the bed, or more likely slumped like a child awaiting a lecture. Her head felt so heavy, like it was full of sand, she couldn’t look up from her knees until James gently took her chin in his hand.

“Hey—you mad at me?” he asked.

Natasha shook her head just enough to break his grip and look down again. “No, no.”

“Nata, come on,” James urged her, dropping to a crouch with one hand on her knee for balance. “I don’t want you to disappear on me, not tonight. I shouldn’t have snapped, I know that and I’m sorry. Did I scare you, were you scared?”

“No,” insisted Natasha. Her voice was so weak it made her unspeakably angry. “I’m fine.”

His whole face shuddered, like he was trying not to curse at her in frustration. After a moment he hid his eyes in her knee, kneading like a cat. “I know you’re lying to me, Natalia; you aren’t even trying.” The words were muffled in her skirt but no less adamant. “Why do you do this? You shut me out over and over and over, and I love you _so_ _much_ , I won’t stop trying to get back in, but _damn_ , Natalia, it’s frustrating.”

“I know.”

“You heard the part where I said I love you though, right?”

“Mhm.”

“I’m not mad at you for what you said about Baba. I’m not mad. I love you. You mad at me?”

Natasha finally found the strength to close her hands in his hair. “I’m not mad at you, either,” she forced out. “I’m mad at _me_ because you were _right_.” She treated her foster parents like shit. She screamed at them, gaslighted them at every turn, ran away, started cutting herself again just to make them feel inadequate, asked Melinda if they became foster parents because her uterus was too crusty to have a baby of their own.

James’s hand moved from her knee to her arm, gripping her tight to anchor her back in the present. “Hey, _hey_ ,” he whispered. “Come on, Nata. You were a kid. We were all shitty when we were kids. If you ran into Phil and Melinda tomorrow, would you treat them the same, or would you apologize?”

“I’d apologize.”

“There you go, see? You’re a better person now. We _both_ are. And-and I only got so touchy about it because…” James trailed off with a tight sigh, tipping his head. “Baba wants to finish the paperwork, make it _official_ , even though I’m already an adult and all. She told me this morning. I called her when I was at the store. Getting crackers.”

_Why did you call her, when you knew you were going to see her tonight?_ Natasha wanted to ask, but she bit down on the nagging curiosity to smooth back his hair. “That’s a good thing,” she told him. “She loves you. She doesn’t want to replace your mom. She wants to make sure you’re taken care of when she’s gone.”

“I know,” James sighed, picking up his head. “It was just a shock, and I’ve been all jittery all day because I think she wants an answer tonight.”

So that was it. His nervous smiles, his iterations of _Sure, whatever you want_ , all day long—he was scared and Natasha couldn’t even see. God, she was a piece of shit. She stood up, raking a hand through his hair and swallowing hard. "I would be happy," she told him slowly, "to have a mom again after so long. Especially one like Baba. But is maybe just me."

His eyes widened in unison with her frown at the arrangement of that last sentence. It had been months since her accent bled back into speech. She still sometimes thought and dreamt in Russian, but had long ago trained herself to speak with an impeccably neutral American dialect. The Leshy insisted on it, because the child of an immigrant who attended American schools would know how to speak English. The only times she spoke her mother tongue were with Baba and James, but her accent still came through when she was about to freak out or have a breakdown.

"Are you—?"

"Is fine— _I'm fine_ ," she insisted, forcing a smile that sat heavy on her face like tar. "Let's go say hi to Baba, and meet Jessica's daughter, and have a good time. If you don't have an answer tonight, you don't have an answer tonight. She can't begrudge you a few days to think."

"Okay." He touched her cheek, then grasped her hand to dive back into the fray together.

Baba was absolutely delighted to see them again. She wrapped Natasha in a tight hug before turning her attention to James, gripping his shoulders and beaming up at him in a secretive sort of way. Probably thinking about the offer she made him that morning. Natasha couldn't help feeling a little jealous. When James agreed to become Baba’s son (she knew he _would_ , because he loved her and there was no real reason not to) he would have a mother again. And she had taken her chance to have that and thrown it in the garbage.

Without realizing she was interrupting Baba and James’s conversation, Natasha blurted, “Baba, do you still have the Coulsons’ phone number? I think I’d like to call them.” Then she recognized the stuttering ends of words that had been cut short and felt her face heat.

“Sure. I get it for you in a little while, okay?” 

She nodded.

They lost themselves in the party for a while—which mostly meant Natasha stood silently at James’s side while he made small-talk with his various past foster siblings. They were all happy, well-adjusted adults with lives and families who knew what they were doing with their futures. It wasn’t fair at all but James seemed happy. He beamed every time he introduced "My beautiful girlfriend," and it eventually lightened her spirits a little.

"Dude," one of James's foster brothers, Tim Dugan, grinned when he saw Natasha. "I remember when you two started dating! That was like 10 years ago!"

"Actually, we didn't start dating until a few years back," chuckled James, embarrassed. "I was just already in love with her 10 years ago, is all." He withdrew his hand from around her to shove it briefly into his jeans pocket, then vigorously shook Dugan's hand and kissed his wife. He caught Natasha staring a few moments later and smiled that shaky smile again. "What's up?"

She tugged him in by the collar and kissed the corner of his mouth. Her heart was pounding like a drum with how much she adored him, how much it scared her. This much genuine emotion was dangerous. If it was real, it was fragile and could hurt her. "I just...love you. So much."

His eyes widened, then nearly vanished because of how widely he was smiling as he wrapped his arm around her. "Wanna get some food?" he offered, very pointedly not making a big deal out of how rarely she said those words aloud. "Catering. _Pretty_ fancy."

"Mm, sure.”

They let themselves get lost in the crowd, not paying too much mind to the press of bodies around them. As long as she kept breathing Natasha could push the anxiety back. If she wanted it to be good, she had to make it so. From around the table James was quickly diverted to another foster sibling’s side to catch up. Natasha brought her plate to an unoccupied chair in the corner and watched the windows gradually darken.

A hand touched her shoulder and Natasha jumped, twisting to find Jessica with a baby in her arms. “I’ve been trying to find you!” she said, raising her voice to be heard over 20 other conversations. “This is Miriam; she’s visiting today, remember?”

Natasha hummed in the affirmative through a mouthful of fancy cheese, then swallowed hard. “How old?” she asked, feeling a rush of anxiety swoop in her gut when the baby reached for her.

“Nine months next Wednesday. She’s gonna be walking soon, aren’t you, Mimi?”

The baby babbled in response. Natasha smiled even as her gut twisted again. “She’s cute,” she said. It was true, after all, but—god. The idea that a 17-year-old was more excited than her to be a parent was kind of intimidating. Embarrassing. Humiliating. Who was the adult, here?

Jessica didn’t seem to notice her momentary conflict, bouncing Miriam on her hip. Behind her in the back yard, James and Tim Dugan were setting up what looked like a bouncy castle. “So listen, I asked Baba if I could do the cake later,” the girl explained. “Do you think you can look after Miriam for me? Just for a few minutes while I’m passing out plates.”

_No. No, no, absolutely not. Please, no._  

“Sure.”

_Dammit_.

Soon enough the whole party was amassed in the living room, rubbing elbows and still spilling out into the hallway and on the back porch. So much love in one house, all of it directed at the center where Baba was beaming around at them. At her request (“to avoid fire hazard!”) they didn’t put candles in the cake. Still, Jessica was taking her task as the official cake-bearer very seriously. She passed Miriam over into Natasha’s arms, reminding her that the baby could crawl away really fast if she put her down, then vanished into the kitchen.

James was trapped on the other end of the room, Tim Dugan’s arm around him, laughing at a joke she couldn’t hear. When he glanced over and saw the baby in her arms, his smile shuddered and widened so far it practically split his face in two. He was so happy and she was terrified.

The chorus of voices singing _Happy Birthday_ was so loud the windows shuddered. Then the cheering when Jessica revealed the single candle she stuck in the cake was deafening. Natasha put a hand over Miriam’s ears and laughed when the candle wouldn’t go out no matter how many times Baba blew. Natasha had never been to a party like it before; even Baba’s other birthdays in the past hadn’t been this huge.

And then the _toasts_ —

Only a handful of Baba’s past foster children stood up, Tim Dugan among them, but the rest were so enthusiastic with their cheering between they may as well have taken the time for every single one to make a speech. There were tears streaming silently and steadily from the old woman’s eyes from the very start, and when James stood last his eyes were gleaming too.

He made a sweeping gesture at the crammed room. "Look at this!" he laughed. "My god, I think you drew a better crowd than the Fleetwood Mac concert last month, Baba. Look at the _family_ you made. I think I speak for everyone when I say you—you changed so many lives. _Saved_ so many lives. You took me in when I was just a punk kid, scared of everything. You taught me Russian. How to cook. You taught me that—that being a man doesn't mean being some big tough jerk, it means honoring my family and doing the right thing. You told me to talk to the quiet new girl at school, and I met the love of my life that day. And I am—"

His voice broke, the glass in his hand shuddering as he took a breath. Before he spoke he looked at Natasha and nodded once. "I...am so _proud_ to call you my mom."

There was a small commotion, then, as Baba wrapped him in a tight hug and promptly burst into tears. Natasha's heart shuddered, but there was no accompanying panic or even jealousy. No mother and son had ever deserved each other more. They would be happy, and their joy would transfer to her as long as she was in their lives. Which, if there was really going to be a baby, would be a very long time. 

While everyone was dispersing to go back to eating and backyard shenanigans, Natasha fought her way through the knot of people, passed Miriam to Baba, and pulled James in for a kiss. His arm wrapped tight around her; he smelled faintly of beer, and she whispered in his ear, again, "I love you so much," just to see the pure joy cross his face.

"Come dance with me," he said, and tugged her into the backyard. "I got some new moves to try out on you."

A canopy tent had been set up out back in case of rain, underneath it a temporary hardwood dance floor and live band. James pulled her in by the waist, she wrapped her arms around his neck, and they swayed. Natasha hadn't believed she was capable of smiling so wide and for so long anymore. Maybe it was an upward hormonal swing. Maybe she was caught up in all the miles and miles of love brimming out the windows and doors and fences of that one small house. After a few songs she lay her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes.

When she opened them a small eternity later it was to find Baba watching, beaming, looking on her beloved son and not-quite-foster daughter. A single unit, not two separate entities. Together.

"Hey, Natalia?" whispered James.

She picked up her head to see that shuddering, scared smile on his face again. "Hm?"

"I wanted to ask you something."

If he hadn't looked so terrified she might have teased him, asked if he wanted to adopt her now too. Instead she just nodded and said, "Okay," with one hand stroking a reassuring line down the nape of his neck.

"I..." He swallowed hard, then withdrew his arm from around her to dig for something in his pocket. Clumsy and nervous, James pulled out a small velvet box and offered it to her. "Will you marry me?"

She blinked. "What?"

"Will you marry me, Natalia?"

" _What?_ " Was she hearing him wrong over the music and voices all around them? It sounded like the ocean was roaring in her ears.

Now James was laughing a little. With the clumsy movements of one who had practiced over and over again he flicked the box open one-handed, and pulled out the beautifully modest ring inside. Being sure to hold it out toward her he dropped to a knee. His teeth were big and white in his grin. She must have been smiling, because he didn't relent even when heads turned and a blush rocketed up her neck.

" _Natalia Romanova,_ " he roared at the top of his voice. Natasha laughed and tears shook loose from her lashes. “ _I love you! WILL—YOU—MARRY—ME?!_ ”

There was a knot in her throat that wasn’t a knot. It was a lump and she swallowed past it, laughed, and nodded.

“ _I’m sorry, baby, I didn’t hear you!_ ” James called to a shout of laughter from those looking.

Natasha clapped both hands over her ears and screamed, “ _YES! YES! YES!_ ” until the vibrations of sound around them and James’s arm swallowed her whole.

In her ear, James murmured, "Don't worry—I asked Baba this morning if i could steal her thunder a little." The idea of it, how ridiculous he was, how much she loved him, belonging to each other, buoyed her. She felt like she could dance forever with him holding her up.

They didn’t leave the party until after midnight. Even though everything was still and silent all along their neighborhood, there was a car idling in their driveway. When they pulled in two women climbed out and waved. The dark hid their faces, but Natasha knew who they were. She would have recognized them blindfolded.

Her blood ran cold.


	5. Friday

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a long one, so brace yourselves! and it does involve a lot of squicky/triggering content such as: referenced child abuse, non-consensual underage sex, referenced pedophilia, suicide attempts, abortion, referenced forced abortion, and child death. Please take care of yourselves first and foremost.

“Everything alright?” James called, climbing out of the car first. “You two having car trouble?”

A flash of gleaming leather glinted under the streetlight. A badge. “Evening, sir,” one of the women said. “We’re Agents Weaver and Hill with the FBI's Crimes Against Children Division. We’re here to speak with Natalia Romanova.”

James craned his neck to look back at Natasha. She was frozen in place in the car, the seat belt gripped tight in both hands. She knew those faces. Even if it was near pitch black, the only source of light the streetlamp above them, Natasha knew those faces as well as she knew the back of her hand. They had aged 10 years but were still recognizable as the same women who dragged her from the Leshy’s clutches, bloody and afraid. 

She stumbled out of the car like a drunk. “What happened?” she asked, unaware of her lips moving. Her mouth was numb, completely numb, her hands shaking.

“Natalia, do you remember us? We’re Agents—”

“I remember,” Natasha interrupted. She felt so cold. Her arms wrapped tightly around her torso to hold her shivering ribs together. This had to be bad. “What happened? Did he…did he get out? Did you find more—?”

Weaver put her hand on Natasha’s arm and smiled. She was tall, taller than James, and had cropped black hair and a practiced kind of smile. "We have _good_ news, Natalia," she said. "Bad news could have waited until you had a good night’s sleep. This—we wanted you to know as soon as possible.”

"Mind if we come inside?" asked Hill, arms crossed. The younger agent's stern face had grown lined in the last 10 years. Even when she smiled she only looked pleased in a vindictive sort of way. It suited her, Natasha remembered thinking even then. "There's a lot that we need to talk about, Natalia. Unless you want us to come back at a better time?"

"You know, it's really late,” James started, trying to be a diplomatic as possible while critically confused and still a little buzzed from the party. He hadn't been around yet when she last encountered the senior and trainee agent team, and she didn't think she would ever see them again. It hadn't seemed relevant to tell James about two people she would never see again. Now they were back and he was going to know and have questions, maybe even be angry—

Natasha brushed past him to open the front door. "Let's just get this over with," Natasha muttered. 

Her hands were shaking so badly it took several tries to get her key in the lock. There was no such thing as good news in relation to her case, no matter how Weaver and Hill painted it. They wouldn't show up in the middle of the night unless it were something drastic, like the Leshy dying or more girls coming forward or her citizenship being put to question for the third time since her witness visa ran out.

“Nice place,” Weaver remarked. Natasha pointed them to the couch and sat in the armchair, elbows on knees. The cuticle on her left thumb was dry, itchy and peeling. She started it pick and scratch at it while James pulled a chair from the kitchen and sat down, looking bewildered. 

The junior agent glanced between them briefly, then at her superior—Weaver nodded at her—and Hill cleared her throat. "So, we'll just get into it, then. There’s been a new development in your case, Natalia."

"We found your family," said Weaver.

They may as well have pulled out baseball bats and started beating her with them. Natasha sucked in a breath. Her hands spasmed. A hot flush spread up her neck and around her ears, blackness encroaching on her vision. She dropped her eyes into one hand. "You found their bodies?" she asked, voice high and thin in her own ears. James's chair scraped on the floor. "Their g-graves?"

"No," insisted Weaver firmly, smiling. "We found _them_. They're _alive_ , Natalia, in Odessa right now, and they _never_ stopped looking for you."

There was something wet on her face, where her thumb was digging into one temple. When Natasha raised her head it was to see blood seeping slowly from the torn cuticle. "They're alive," she echoed. Every breath rattled in her chest. Weaver looked like she itched to put a hand on her shoulder but was too far away. Natasha was isolated from the room, her own small island.

Hill nodded. "They're alive and they're well. We also found Petrovitch's family; they're being held in protective custody in Berlin, but it seems the danger has passed with Rodchenko’s incarceration. The rest of the families will be more difficult, because you didn't know any of the other girls' names, and disinterring the bodies may take—"

"Hey, hey, whoa!" James interrupted, holding up his hand. "I may not be the smartest guy in the world, but what the hell are we talking about? Why are we digging up the bodies of dead girls?"

"It's part of the investigation," snapped Hill back at him. "Most of the girls in the ring were killed after Natalia and Yelena came forward, which will make it harder to identify them for the families back in Russia and Ukraine."

He looked at Natasha, terror interpreted as betrayal naked on his face. "A _ring?_ " His voice was raspy with shock and horror. "Like...like a...?"

Natasha couldn't speak. Her throat had closed up around the knot there, like an allergic reaction, at the mention of Ivan Petrovitch and Rodchenko's names. Quietly, over her head, Weaver said, "Human trafficking," to James. “A man named Arseni Rodchenko was using children to move drugs into America, and afterward…child pornography and prostitution.”

" _What?!_ "

Her nose was practically on her knees by then. James was panicking, thinking about the beautiful little ring he had put on her finger only a few hours ago, trying to figure out a way to back out now. Why would he still want her? No one in their right mind would want someone so damaged, and even if he was delusional enough to want her still, the anger brought on by her secrecy after so many years would drive him away instead. 

She could feel him staring at her, feel all of them staring at her, feel eyes a thousand miles away in a high-security prison staring at her, watching her, judging her. Ivan Petrovitch’s eyes were opening in his grave and the worms were watching, too. She had done bad things and then lied about them to the only person in the world that mattered.

Conversation hummed and blurred over Natasha’s head while Weaver and Hill tried to explain that the explicit details of her case were confidential. James insisted it was “ _Bullshit! I’m her fiancé!_ ”

Were she watching from a distance she would have recognized that James was only yelling because he was shocked and concerned, but all Natasha could hear were sharp words like a raised fist. Her hand was stinging where she tore the cuticle. There was a tiny bit of flesh hanging off the bloody nail and it burned all the way down to her bones. If she could just get that off it would feel better, she wouldn’t be so upset or distracted and she could explain she lied because she wanted James to want her. That wasn’t so bad, was it? That wasn’t so bad. It wasn’t so bad at all…

A hand touched her shoulder. Natasha jumped as if she'd been struck and picked up her head. "Here you go, kid," Hill murmured, offering out a Band-Aid. "You still seeing a doctor?"

Natasha shook her head. "I thought it was over."

"Well, it's never over," replied the older woman gruffly. "Not to survivors. Get yourself an appointment. Your family back home are doing the same, taking counseling and courses on how to deal with bringing up the things that might be hard for you. With the immigration process as it is, the state of the Russian government, they'll be here in around two or three months. That's plenty of time to get your head on straight.”

"They..." Natasha began, swallowing around the knot in her throat. She glanced at James and Weaver behind her hair. Their conversation had fizzled when Hill approached her; Natasha addressed Weaver. "They know what happened to me?"

Weaver hesitated. "The crimes committed against you as a minor were disclosed, yes," she nodded.

"So, all of them," retorted Natasha, a flash of anger swooping through her gut. "Do they know about—about the—about my—"

"They know about that, yes."

Her parents knew about the baby. They knew that the Leshy locked her in a house with Ivan Petrovitch, who was cold and distant because he knew what would happen to his own family in Russia if he got too attached and rebelled. They knew an army of perverts impregnated her. They knew that the Leshy sent her across town to another ringleader’s house for an illegal abortion, and when she started bleeding out the girl in that house, Yelena Belova, called an ambulance and was beaten nearly to death for her efforts to save them. 

She thought she would be angry, or at least upset. Instead all Natasha wanted to do was sleep. She dragged herself out of the chair like there were four more bodies' worth of weight on top of her and started drifting toward the bedroom. "You can leave now."

Both agents stood. "Natalia—"

“ _I said, you can leave now._ "

Behind her, Weaver passed James a business card. "If you have any questions or concerns. We'll get in touch with more details as her family's arrival gets closer, okay? The chance that press might catch on is high enough, we want to keep this quiet.”

"Sure, sure. Thanks. Sorry about—"

"It's fine. Take care, James."

His footsteps trailed her into the bathroom, where Natasha had already started filling the bathtub with scalding hot water and stripping off her party dress. Knotty white scars on her hips shone fluorescent in the warm light. James stared at her as she tugged off her boots, threw them across the tiny room with a grunt, and yanked off her socks to reveal even more webwork tangled like lace above her feet.

“Natalia,” James whispered, pleading as she climbed into the steaming water. “Come on, Nata, say something.” It was so hot, she felt like she was on fire as she sank down to her ears. Natasha watched James’s mouth move but couldn’t hear a sound other than her own pulse. His hand dipped under the water to draw her back up. “Hey, come on, don’t do that.”

At his guidance, she lay her head on the rim of the tub, eyes closed so she wouldn’t have to see his face. “Are you mad at me?” she muttered.

“No. Why would I be mad?”

“I lied. For a long time, I lied.”

“—I mean, _yeah_ , you did, but I’m not mad.”

She cracked an eye open. “You surprised?”

Wet fingers tangled in the hair at her nape, kneading into tense muscles while James thought. “I don’t—I guess…maybe it makes sense,” he slowly said.

“Don’t say that,” Natasha grunted. “Don’t say that my _assault_ explains who I am. I’m me because I’m _me_ , not because I was a child prostitute.”

“Natalia—”

“Porn baby, that what they call them—?”

“Natalia, _stop_ —”

“In the videos, I mean, they made me do videos first— _ow!_ ”

He pinched the back of her neck to snap her out of the trancelike state she had fallen into. “I was gonna say, it makes sense why you’d keep it from people,” James said sternly. “If you listened for half a second you’d know that. But you don’t _do_ that, do you? You don’t _listen_ , you bulldoze over everything because you’re so caught up in whatever’s going on in your head, one of the _many_ things you never, _ever_ tell me about. Why didn’t you tell me this, Nata? That’s all I wanna know.”

This shouldn’t have been so hard. It was already out in the open, wasn’t it? So why couldn’t she just open her mouth and tell him?

“You wouldn’t want me anymore,” she finally admitted, voice barely audible above the stinging hot water. “Who would want a fucked-up person like me, unless I tricked them into it first?”

James looked about to cry as he shook his head, violently, from side to side. "I fell in love with you the second I saw you," he told her. "Had nothing to do with tricking me. You could never make me stop wanting you, you know? It's like—the sun is the sun, right? It's big and bright and awesome, even if there are some clouds in front of it. It's still the _sun_. Rain doesn't change the sun."

She was too tired for metaphors. It must have shown in her face, because James huffed a laugh and shifted his arm around her better, dress shirt soaked up to the shoulder as he cradled her. "Can't believe I'm the one using metaphors, here. You didn't give me any other choice. Just warning you now... _You are my sunshine, my only sunshine; you make me happy when skies are gray..._ "

The water slowly cooled as James sang to her in a raspy unpracticed voice. Every word of that old, sad song. Every line. He wasn’t much of a singer. That was Clint’s thing. Clint belted crude and profane limericks through the facility halls when he thought Natasha wasn’t listening. It was a long song, and James sang slowly like a lullaby through all six verses with her head pillowed on his shoulder. She loved him as much as she ever had or ever could love anyone.

When she finally stood from the tepid water on shaking legs, James leaned in and kissed one of the scars on her hip before rising with her. He wrapped a towel around her shoulders and kissed her forehead next. Wrapped up tight, Natasha trailed listlessly after him to the bedroom. He had been drinking at the party and slid into sleep almost instantly. Natasha didn’t close her eyes until near dawn.

“Maybe you shouldn’t go in today,” James suggested while she brushed her teeth for a second time after their alarm woke them. The first time she hadn’t been careful about morning sickness and accidentally made herself throw up trying to brush the fuzzy sensation from her tongue. Now she was hunched over the sink, supporting herself with one hand on the counter, even more exhausted than when she woke after two hours of sleep. “It might be a good idea to call—what’s his name, Doctor Ross?—see if he’s got any appointments open this afternoon, get some more rest.”

She shook her head, spat in the sink. “I hated that guy,” Natasha muttered darkly.

“Well, Agent Hill said—”

“I know what she said,” she insisted. “I just don’t want to go back to Ross, he was a creep. I think his daughter started working at his practice. I’ll see if she has any appointments this week, but—not today. I just need to work and I’ll feel better. Grant’s birthday’s tomorrow, he might be a flight risk, and Skye already made a break for it once in her first week, and I _know_ Garrett will be all over my ass if I take a sick day right after a personal day, he’ll think I’m hungover…”

“Why do you care so much what Garrett thinks?” asked James, running a frustrated hand through his long hair. “You’re too valuable for him to fire you, and it’s not like you don’t have a viable excuse if you explain—”

“ _James_ ,” Natasha ground out between clenched teeth, feeling clammy and nauseous again. “I just—something about Garrett rubs me the wrong way, alright? I don’t want to get on his bad side because he gives me the creeps. He gives me the fucking goddamn _heebie_ - _jeebies_ every time I look at him. I want to go to work. I don’t want to think about anything in real life right now.”

As she tried to brush past him, James caught her waist in his hand. “Hey,” he murmured, all warmth and affection, but a hint of caution, too. She frowned up at him and he stroked her cheek. “Will you marry me?”

All at once she remembered the party, James dropping to a knee and yelling that same question for the whole backyard to hear, the rush of joy returning to her in small tastes. Natasha held up the hand wearing his modest ring and mustered a small smile. “Yes, I will,” she quietly replied.

Her bike, rescued from Baba’s the night before, was still racked on top of the Forrester, but they were both too tired to bother pulling it down now. Natasha lay her head on the passenger window and dozed all the way to work with her hand on James’s knee. Practically the second they walked through the staff door Steve barreled into the break room, glancing expectantly between them, almost vibrating with anticipation.

“Lemme see it,” he demanded, beaming.

She shot James an accusing look and he blushed crimson. So there had at least been one other person involved in his schemes the day before. Sneaking out to buy crackers—and maybe a ring too?—taking her out to all her favorite places that afternoon, proposing in a beautiful place surrounded by people who loved them. It was all planned. Her sneaky man.

“Come on, I’ve been waiting _two weeks_ for this sucker to ask you!” whine Steve when he received no answer, trying his damnedest not to laugh at the shock on Natasha’s face as her split-second theory fell instantly apart. A part of her suspected he only asked because of the baby. “Please, Natasha? Please, please, please? I gotta make sure my guy’s treating you right and spent three months’ salary on the ring and all that other goofy romantic crap.”

“You’ve been hanging out with Clint too much,” Natasha chuckled breathlessly, offering her hand for Steve to take.

He barely glanced at the ring for a second before overwhelming joy made his face shudder. Tugging on her hand, Steve enveloped her in a nearly crushing embrace. For a generally sickly guy, he had a good grip. 

“I’m so happy for you guys,” Steve said, voice muffled in her shoulder.

“Okay, okay,” replied Natasha, tugging out of his grip only for James to swoop in and sandwich her from the other side, laughing like a kid. “Oh—really? We’re doing this? A group hug?”

Footsteps pounded in the hall and Clint practically busted through the door. “Did someone say ‘group hug?’” he asked, face lighting up when he saw them. “Oh my god, _yes_.” Natasha managed to squirm free just as Clint was dive-bombing in to join the hug, laughing and fleeing to the hall.

Jemma, tiny and birdlike as ever, was slouched on the rec room couch with Lee’s shoulder pressed against hers, both of them staring at the TV like zombies. "Hey, look who's out of his room," Natasha remarked, and they jumped in surprise.

"Natasha!" cried Jemma, jumping off the couch to hug her. "Don't ever leave again; yesterday was _terrible_."

"Social worker came," peeped Lee in agreement. There was something small hidden in his cupped fists. Natasha suspected it was a secret survivor of the monkey repossession and didn't say a word as she braided Jemma's hair. "Did you...have fun at your party?"

Natasha hummed. "Sure did." She tied off Jemma's braid and squeezed her shoulder, already feeling worlds better since waking up now that she had a distraction. "Where's everyone else, playing in the yard?" she asked.

"Almost everyone," nodded Jemma. "Grant and Mike were sent to their rooms after breakfast, though."

"Uh-oh. What happened?"

"Grant's fish died. Everyone thinks Mike killed it."

Dread pooled in Natasha's gut. In the hall, she could hear the guys heading out to supervise play time so Sam could go home. Now was as good a time as ever to check into the fish drama. Poor Grant. Poor Buddy, too. He wasn't so old, for a goldfish. After Grant passed his interview with Garrett he got Buddy as a birthday present, and spent most of his time alone in his room maintaining Buddy's bowl. What money he had went toward fish food, and every few days he dutifully changed Buddy's water and cleaned the rocks because he couldn't afford a filter.

First she went to Mike's room, standing in the door with arms crossed until the kid snapped. "What?! I didn't fucking do anything!"

"Wanna try that again?" she asked, eyebrow raised.

"Little white boy has a hissy fit because he might have a scar on his head from Mom and Dad beating him," Mike ground out. "But me? I get bit up by one of my dad's fighting dogs as a little kid, and _that asshole calls me a fucking freak my first day! It's not fucking fair!_ "

Natasha couldn't help asking, "You've tormented him for six months because he was an idiot and called you names? Mike, you're _better_ than that.”

“I know I am; he’s a neo-Nazi!”

“He’s not a neo-Nazi, his _parents_ are neo-Nazis. _He’s_ in therapy to unlearn those behaviors.”

“It doesn’t fucking matter, he’s still racist!” Mike yelled. “He’s only friends with Trip and Raina because they’re all Garrett’s little _fuck-toys!_ ” Fuming but coming down from his head of steam, Mike sat back against the wall and scowled. “Guy loves ‘em so much, they probably blow him in his office. Dunno what _else_ would make that prick smile so much.”

Natasha frowned. “Don’t joke about that,” she told him. “Don’t _ever_ joke about that. I’ll spare you the minus-point because you’re upset, but if I find out you _actually_ killed Buddy, you won’t see the yard for a week.”

“I didn’t kill the fish! _He_ flushed the fish, and it wasn’t even dead! _He killed his own goddamn fish!_ ”

Already thrown off by what Mike said about Garrett, Natasha was thrown for another loop at that. “He—okay,” she stammered dumbly. “I’m going to go talk to him. Just stay here until we figure this out, please?”

Mike shook his head with a dramatic eye-roll. “Yeah, _whatever_ ,” he muttered, and she retreated.

Why the hell would Grant flush his living goldfish?

He looked like he was sleeping when Natasha peered in his room, curled up with his back to the door. She called softly for him a few times, watching for the slightest twitch of his shoulders that indicated he was awake and listening, but there was nothing. _Let him sleep a little while_ , she reasoned with herself. _He's stressing himself out with his birthday tomorrow, he could have flushed Buddy in a fit. He probably feels bad now._ It wouldn't be the first time a kid did something they regretted, like when Natasha chopped all her hair off during the Leshy's trial.

Still, she checked the boys' bathrooms in case Buddy somehow didn't go down—the plumbing wasn't exactly state-of-the-art, after all—but there was no sign of the poor goldy.

Sam was still gathering his things together in the office when Natasha found him. "Hey, you," he greeted her warmly, shuffling a few forms into an organized stack. "I _really_ like your new guy, Natasha. He's gonna bring about some real positive change, I can tell. Lee loves him. Jemma's got a crush on him, no surprises there."

"Jemma's got a crush on everybody," grinned Natasha, arms crossed where she leaned in the door frame. "I'm guessing you heard about the fish issue?"

He shot her a look behind his dark lashes. "Everybody in the tri-county area heard about the fish issue," he reported dryly. "I dunno what gets into these kids' heads sometimes, you know that?"

She nodded, peering out the window and wondering who was missing in the yard. Kamala was there, Miles was there, Raina, Trip, Jemma and Lee were inside... "Where's Skye?"

"Hm?" grunted Sam. He was scrawling his signature on something, not quite listening. "Oh—she went home, weekend pass."

" _What?!_ " Natasha snapped, instantly in panic mode when she remembered the last time she saw Skye. "N-no, she's not supposed to—I submitted a report! Her parental visits were supposed to be postponed."

His eyebrows shot up. "You submitted it this morning?" he asked.

"I put it in Garrett's mailbox Wednesday night, before I went home." 

Rifling through a drawer full of file folders, Sam pulled out a permission form. "He signed off on the pass this morning."

_No!_ No, no, no, no, no. Not good. Natasha spun on her heel and marched out of the office, practically sprinting across the facility to Garrett's office. She pounded once on the door; it swung open under her hand and she stormed in without waiting for permission. " _You sonofabitch!_ "

Garrett was seated at his computer, answering emails, his collection of solar bobble-head dolls ticking softly behind him. He didn't flinch when she came in, just slowly roved his eyes up to look at her, then sat back. "Care to try that again?" he asked, folding his hands.

"You let Skye go even though I left a report _explicitly_ saying not to," she elaborated, not bothering to lower her voice. "Why, _why_ would you do that? She could be in _danger_ , Garrett."

"I would love to talk to you about this like rational adults, but it's difficult for me to understand when you use that tone of voice," said Garrett, slow and calm and loud enough to make her ears ring. 

" _Have a seat, Natasha._ "

Fuming and a little scared, she sat. She clenched her hands in her lap. Her thumb throbbed where she tore up the cuticle early that morning, hidden under a Band-Aid. Natasha stared at Garrett, waiting.

He took his time sliding his keyboard aside and leaning both elbows on the desk. He smiled at her, teeth bared like a hungry shark. "I appreciate your concern and admire your vigilance, really I do," he began, "but I elected to disregard your report. It read like the result of a paranoid and distressed _delusion_." 

"Delusion," echoed Natasha numbly. "You think I'm delusional?"

"I think you're a little hysterical right now, because you're overworked," admitted Garrett with a shrug. "You rarely take days off, yesterday excluded, you work longer hours than any other member of staff, and recent behavior tells me the line between your professional and personal life is grossly blurred. That's what I think."

She gaped. Hysterical? How had this turned into a performance review? And why, despite Garrett's calmness and apparent concern for her well-being, did she feel like she was preparing for an attack? "I _know_ the difference between my professional and personal life," she said.

"And yet you're projecting your own troubled childhood experience onto Miss Poots."

"I'm not _projecting_ anything!" And how would he know if she was?

"There is no evidential basis for you to suspect abuse!" Garrett shot back. “Mary Sue has never given any indication to her therapist or her social worker—"

" _Because she's scared!_ " Natasha shouted, adrenaline driving her to her feet. "Because there is no _evidential basis_ , because people like _you_ don't believe her, she thinks that if she tells someone her parents will find out and she will face the consequences! In her mind they are always right behind her; when she's in her room, when she's _taking a shit_ , when she's with her social worker—they are over her shoulder, watching her, _waiting_ to attack! Do you understand that?!”

Garrett opened his mouth to respond but she cut him off. " _I_ talked to that girl, Garrett. And she opened up to me, and she _cried_ , and she told me in the only way she knew how! I'm not going to let you devalue her safety because you have some grudge against me!"

"And I will not allow _you_ to tarnish the reputations of two decent people without evidence!" retorted Garrett.

"Yeah, especially when they're very _cultured_ friends of friends, right?"

He pointed an accusing finger at her. "Just because you gave it up to every dick in your face as a child and called it ' _trauma,_ ' doesn't mean every teenager with a bad attitude is being abused, _Matryoshka_."

Natasha recoiled as if she'd been slapped, taking a half-step back. Something shifted into place in her mind and her ears started to ring again, deafening. "How did you know I was—?" she rasped, then side-stepped her chair and took another step toward the door. "The record of my abuse wasn't in any of the paperwork you were given when you started working here."

He smiled that shark-like smile again. "Come back when _you_ have a story someone will _believe_ ," Garrett said, and somehow Natasha understood he wasn't talking about Skye anymore. No amount of evidence could convince him to believe her.

Or incriminate himself.

Like a ghost, Natasha turned around and drifted into the hall. Then something snapped. She turned back to the corner of Garrett's office, and seized the display case of collected bobble-heads, hauling it with her down the hall.

"Uh, Nat?" Clint asked, drawn over by the noise. "What're you doing?"

She shoved past him, dolls toppling and rolling in the case. Clint followed her out the side door where she had escaped to throw up on Tuesday. With an animalistic cry, Natasha raised the case over her head and forced it down where the concrete sidewalk and facility's brick wall joined. It didn't shatter or splinter because it was that cheap cardboard-base fake wood, which was unfortunate, but a few of the bobble-heads cracked. She pulled out the survivors and chucked them against the wall, one by one, until every doll was in pieces.

Clint watched all this unfold in an impressed sort of silence, then only said three words: "What. The. Hell."

"I..." Natasha panted, shaking and sweating. She pushed her hair back, feeling sick. "I _wish_ I knew."

Gusting a sigh, he wrapped an arm around her shoulders and started leading her back inside. "As much as I appreciate some good old-fashioned anarchy once in a while, that was a little extreme, Red."

"I know."

There was no way to explain what the things Garrett said had done to the inside of her head. Natasha couldn't comprehend what it meant for herself, it was like her mind was rebelling against even attempting to ruminate on them. When she tried to search back in her memory for what she might have said to indicate her abuse to Garrett in the last five years, her ears started to ring again and her mind went disturbingly blank.

The kids had reassembled in the rec room, Mike included, but Grant was still notably absent. "Has anyone checked on him?" she asked.

"Bucky peeked in, but he was sleeping,” replied Clint.

Still? "I'm gonna go check on him, see if he's ready to talk to us. Might be a good idea to call his social worker."

"Sure, I'll take care of it."

He turned to go, and at the last moment Natasha reached for his arm. "Hang on."

"What's up?" he asked, frowning when he looked directly at her. "You okay?"

"I need you to do something for me, but it could get us both fired."

The furrow between his brows deepened, but there was a smirk forming on his lips. "Like that's ever stopped me," Clint scoffed. "Whatever you need."

Natasha released his arm. "I need you to get the footage from the security camera in Garrett's office," she said. "All of it, as far back as you can get."

"Uh, you know I'm not great with computer stuff—"

"Get Sam or Steve to help you. If I get caught he'll have the cops escort me out, but if it's only your first offense..." She tipped her head imploringly.

After a minute he rolled his eyes and ruffled her hair. "Don't look at me like that; I'll do it," he sighed. "You know I'd do anything for you."

" _Thank you._ "

"Yeah, yeah, yeah."

Immensely relieved, Natasha walked to Grant's room with less anxiety weighing on her shoulders. That was one thing down, at least. One of many things. She knocked on the bedroom door before pushing it open. "Grant, it's time," she called gravely, only to realize the bed was empty and meet resistance behind the door. "What're you—?"

Blood. Blood all over the floor, in the carpet, on the walls, and a shattered goldfish bowl next to Grant's prone body.

Natasha dropped to her knees and closed both hands around the canyon Grant carved into his arm. " _SOMEBODY HELP!_ " she screamed into the hall, so loud her throat felt like it was tearing apart. " _CALL AN AMBULANCE, NOW!_ Grant, Grant, can you hear me? It's Natasha, you're okay, you're going to be okay— _IS SOMEONE CALLING A FUCKING AMBULANCE?!_ "

Light footsteps came pounding nearer. Raina screamed and started to sob.

"Raina, Raina, honey, I need you to help me," Natasha said, much more sharply than she should have done. She pointed to the bed. "Get the pillowcase or the sheet, anything, please. Raina, now."

" _I don't wanna step in the blood!"_

_"I DON'T CARE, RAINA! YOU HAVE TO DO IT, OR GRANT WILL DIE!_ "

The poor girl was barely breathing she was crying so hard, walking on her toes through the blood-soaked carpet and stumbling just before she reached the bed. It may as well have taken an hour to pull the case off his pillow. Natasha knew she was still screaming, but had no idea what words her lips were forming. She wrapped the pillowcase tight around Grant's arm, not sure if she was doing it right, too scared to tremble as she held the makeshift bandage closed and watched blood seep through.

James, Clint, and Steve kept the rest of the kids wrangled while paramedics made their way through the narrow hall to Grant's room. It was as much a relief to step away from Grant's body as it was a source of anxiety. She didn't want to leave him, but at the same time she wanted to run and run and run as far and fast as she could. Instead she settled for scrubbing her hands clean in the bathroom and sitting with everyone else in the rec room.

She didn't huddle against the sides of her friends, as much as she might have wanted to. The kids were scared, some of the younger ones crying, so she spaced herself among them like the rest of the staff and tried offering comfort where she could. If that meant sitting near Trip and Raina, maybe overhearing some of their conversation, well, so be it.

"You think he's gonna die?" whispered Trip, his forehead nearly touching Raina's they were ducked so close together.

The girl shook her head. "I dunno. He looked dead already, but he was still bleeding, so that means he's still alive, right?"

"That's right. You can't bleed when you're dead because your heart stops pumping blood and stuff."

"And stuff." The tearful strain was returning to Raina's voice. Trip put an arm around her. "You think he said something bad to Grant?"

Natasha's ears pricked.

"I dunno, Raina, and you know Grant won't ever tell us."

"Why not?"

"He's the oldest. He doesn't think we gotta hear that stuff. It's okay. Just try to go to sleep or something."

"It's the middle of the day, Trip, I'm not a baby—"

"I know, I just mean...close your eyes. It won't be as scary with your eyes closed."

The paramedics wheeled Grant out on a gurney a few minutes later. For a gut-wrenching moment Natasha thought he was covered completely with a sheet, but then saw it was only pulled up to his chest. _Thank god thank god thank god._ "Anybody following?" called the woman pulling the gurney.

Natasha and James, the only ones who didn't bus to work, exchanged a glance and rose. "We are." She tapped Clint's shoulder so he would look at her face, driven further toward the favor she asked him by Trip and Raina's conversation. "Keep an eye on everyone here, and—don't forget the other thing."

"Steve and I got this," he promised her. "Call when there's news."

"I will."

She and James climbed into the Forrester and took off after the ambulance as it sped down the highway, lights flashing and sirens blaring. Natasha had no idea how long they would have to wait, if Grant would live, or where the hell Garrett had been hiding when one of his favorite charges tried to kill himself. This time Natasha didn’t put her hand on James’s knee, didn’t even acknowledge him, really. Instead she stared at her hands, thinking about blood, about the bluish pallor of Grant’s skin when the paramedics finally nudged her aside, about the doomed baby inside her.

How could she raise a baby if she couldn't even do her job and keep these kids safe? Grant could die because she didn't take initiative and make him join the rest of the group. Because she didn't follow through on the sick feeling Garrett gave her the moment she met him. There had to be a connection there somewhere. There had to be.

Sitting in the waiting room was the worst part. Natasha couldn't make herself busy in a hospital waiting room. She couldn't corral noisy kids or make lunch or hide in the—well, maybe she _could_ hide in the bathroom, but it wasn't appropriate. All she could do was wait, hands clasped tight between her knees, staring at the tile floor. James made runs for food and coffee every few hours until the sun sank and harsh fluorescent lights took over.

They waited four hours, and there was still no news.

How could she do this if it were her own child? Could she sit here so diligently and await news that her son or daughter had died at their own hand? It would happen. No matter what she did, it was inevitable. An end without means.

James's hand covered hers for the dozenth time in an hour to stop her scratching at her Band-Aid, and Natasha jerked away. The light in her eyes was shimmering, sharp, too bright. “Nata?" he asked.

She stood up and walked out the doors into the parking lot, pacing to calm the frantic hammering of her heart in the evening's half-light. He followed her out, calling her name. "I can't," she gasped, stopping with hands on her knees. "I can't do this."

"Can't do _what?_ "

" _This!_ " Natasha yelled, voice cracking. " _This, any of it, I can't do it!_ "

James paused, hovering a few feet away from her, hand outstretched like trying to placate a spooked animal. "Okay," he slowly said. Like how he talked to the kids when they were getting hostile, when they were scaring him but he was too afraid to admit it. "I get that. It's been a long day. Let's go home; they'll call work when there's news if we aren’t here. You just need a breather—"

" _No_ ," Natasha moaned, shaking her head with both hands clasped over her ears. "I can't _do it._ I can't...I can't have the baby. I can't marry you. I can't, James, I _can't_."

His eyes widened so much she could see the whites all the way around. "Wh-what are you talking about?" he asked.

"I'm talking about _me!_ I can't have kids. They'll die. They'll _kill themselves_."

" _Natalia_ ," gasped James incredulously. "What the hell? _No_ , no, they won't. Our kids won't kill themselves. We talked about this, remember? I-I’m gonna be good, and you're gonna be good, and our kids… Where the hell did you come up with this? Because of Grant? He was abused, Natalia. He's fucked up. That's not our fault."

"I was abused, too. I'm fucked up, too. You have _no idea—_ "

His hand seized her upper arm and shook, much harder than he ever had before. Natasha's teeth rattled. "I would have an idea if you just _let me in!_ " James snapped, voice cracking. "That's what we _do_ , that's how this _works_. Every goddamn day you tell those kids to _open_ _up_ , to _talk_ about their issues, to find _someone out there_ _who cares enough to listen_. And what are you doing, Natalia? You’re shutting everyone out, shutting _me_ out!”

The ringing was back in her ears. Natasha raised both hands to cover them up again, eyes tight shut, lips peeled back in a grimace as she fought not to scream. It was one thing to have the truth hover at the back of her mind; having it thrown in her face was just as violent as a punch. “I can’t have the baby,” she insisted.

James licked his trembling lips, eyes shining with anger and fear. “You can’t, or you _won’t?_ ” he asked softly. “Cuz if you think you can’t, I can try to convince you, but if you won’t—”

“I _won’t_.” Natasha opened her eyes and looked at him, then darted her glance away, anywhere but the broken heart bleeding into his expression.

He was trying so hard to be angry, but his voice shook on the edge of breaking. “So…what? You wanna have an abortion?” James asked.

There was a weight tugging on her head, pulling her down into the shadows, but when Natasha tried to bow in on herself James shook her arm again. She jerked and flailed until his grip broke and she staggered a few steps away, feeling as much like a hunted animal as a person. “I already made an appointment,” she said thickly. “The day I found out, I made an appointment for Monday.” She had no idea anymore if she was telling him for the sake of telling the truth or to hurt him.

“And you told me anyway? You got my hopes up and told me I would be the most amazing dad? _Was that a fucking joke to—?!_ ” He cut himself off. Pressed a hand tight over his mouth. His wet eyes. Then dropped the hand and laughed a hollow, bitter laugh. “You know what? Do whatever you want, because I’m done. I’m fucking _done_ , Natalia. You can come find me when you know what you really want.”

And he left her there, her left arm gently throbbing where he grabbed on, retreated back into the cold lights of the waiting room.

Something snapped, and it snapped, and snapped again until splinters gouged a resolution into the inside of her skull. Natasha turned, walked on steady legs to the Forrester, and knocked her skull yanking her bike down from the rack. It was so simple. What she had to do. It was obvious. She swung a clumsy leg over the seat and took off, resistance cranked all the way up, legs aching with the last two days’ inactivity. Heart racing with purpose.

She was going to kill Skye’s father.

It made so much sense that it couldn’t be put into coherent thought, let alone words. Natasha steered herself in the direction of Skye’s house, mouth wide open to catch her breath as she pumped her legs in a furious tandem. _This_ was terminal velocity. This was a comet entering Earth’s atmosphere, shining bright as a star as it burned to rubble. This was her mission and she wasn’t going to give it up for anything. 

They were always the fathers, weren’t they? The ones who caused pain. The ones who scared mothers into silence, like Clint’s. Or the pseudo-fathers like Petrovitch, who cried every time they let perfect strangers touch the little girls in their care, but continued to allow the violence time and time again, because their _real_ daughters were being held hostage back home. They were always the fathers, or the metaphorical ones, who were placed in charge of vulnerable children too damaged to say no, who took that advantage and ran with it all the way to an office. There were too many to stop, but Natasha knew. She knew, now. She was smarter and she was bigger and she could fight back, even if Skye and Yelena and those 26 dead girls couldn’t.

The Poots’ house was dark and quiet. Not surprising. A nice modern car sat shining in the drive. A light flickered in one window, probably from a TV. Natasha kicked aside the welcome mat as Skye had done two nights ago and entered silently, practiced after years of sneaking out of the Coulsons’ house. She had no idea where this sudden agility in black darkness was coming from; usually she was blind as a bat without a night light. Maybe it was the adrenaline making her better. Or maybe she had finally woken up.

In the front hall closet, she found a golf kit. Of the heavy clubs and small shimmering putters, Natasha pulled out a 460 driver. It was heavy and cold in her steady hands. The only sound was that of her own breath in her ears as she crept up the stairs, pausing every time a board creaked under her weight. She held the club with both hands, a few inches from the head and another hand bracing the shaft so it wouldn’t knock into the walls. Natasha followed the sounds of the TV.

Of course it was pornography. She blocked out the sounds and sights that would make her gag and instead focused on the sleeping man. Nice hair. A rumpled suit. A pervert’s hands. The club was so heavy her arms had begun to shake. There was only one chance to strike true before he woke and raised an alarm. Natasha raised the club high over her head, bracing herself, counting down, taking aim—

“What are you _doing?_ ”

She jumped. Hugged the club against her chest to stop it from clattering to the floor. Spun in place and stared at Skye. 

The girl was still dressed despite the lateness of the hour, phone glued to her hand as usual, squinting in the dark. Her narrowed eyes flickered from Natasha to the TV, then back again. 

She frowned. “Is that _you_?” she asked, pointing at the screen.

At first Natasha thought it was a joke, but she pivoted again and felt bile burn in her throat at the realization that _Yes, that’s me_. She recognized the Leshy’s basement wallpaper and the freckles on her nose. Her hair was still in braids, so she had to have been eight or nine. The camera was close in on her red and tear-streaked face, the big hands on her head, a familiar voice goading her on to be a _good girl, Matryoshka_.

“Yeah, it is.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah.”

A hand tugged on her sleeve. Natasha looked away from the screen, and followed Skye back downstairs and out the front door. They sat on the front step without a word. There was nothing they could say. It was a warm night but Natasha shivered violently. The club sat abandoned in the grass a few feet away. Her thumb was throbbing. 

Skye looked up at her. “Are you going nuts?” she asked frankly.

“Maybe.” The word was barely more than a rasp around the knot in her throat. Natasha shook her head and rocked slightly in place. She had to do something, distract herself. She looked at Skye. “Are you okay?” she asked.

Pausing, as if considering her answer very carefully first, Skye shrugged. Then she leaned back against the front door and tugged up her shirt. A bruise livid enough to make Natasha gasp stood out on her side. "I told him I didn't wanna do it anymore," she dismissed gruffly, dropping her shirt back down. “He doesn’t even _play_ golf, you know that? He just keeps those around and polishes them menacingly whenever I don’t do what he wants. Fucking asshole.” Even as she tried to sound aloof and unafraid, Skye’s voice was congested with tears.

Thinking back, Natasha remembered something Skye said on Wednesday night. “Did he kill your mom?”

“What?” retorted Skye, frowning. “No—she’s upstairs, sleeping. It’s…complicated. She kind of mentally checked out when I was a little kid. Found out dad was paying this Russian guy two towns over to diddle his daughter.” She blinked and looked up when Natasha choked on that information. “Oh, _shit_.”

Natasha shook her head. “Don’t worry about it. It doesn’t matter.”

“Uh, it kind of _does_.”

“Well not to you,” she snapped. “You’re a kid. I’m an adult. It’s my job to worry about this stuff. And I-I’m good at putting it away where it belongs. So— _yeah_. I was abducted. And I was made to do bad things. And I…and I got pregnant. And now I have _this baby_ inside me, and I don’t know what to do anymore because I _can’t_ …” Natasha cut herself off and briefly pressed both hands over her eyes. “But that’s _my_ problem. Not yours. When I was your age, I had to stand in a court room and tell them all the ways I was abused. I know how scary it can be. I just wanted to help you.”

Skye’s expression clearly said she didn’t believe a word Natasha was saying, but she didn’t protest. She only stood and offered both hands to help Natasha up after her. “Can we go?”

“Back to Shield?”

“Mhm.”

Natasha nodded, breathless. “Yeah, we can go.”

They started toward the parked bike in the drive but Skye paused. Darting back to the lawn, she grabbed the golf club and marched toward the gleaming car in the drive. Briefly rearing back, the girl slammed the heavy club head down onto the pristine windshield with a resounding _BAM_.

“ _What are you doing?!_ ”

Skye passed the club to Natasha, mouth trembling into a half-smile. “Don’t worry; he sleeps through everything and Mom won’t tell,” Skye assured her. “Your turn.”

Her turn? She took the heavy weight of the club in her hand, feeling a rush of heat and power come from the mere act of wielding the item with which she initially intended to kill. There was a steady rhythm pulsing in her ears, accompanied by a deafening ring. The longer she lingered on Mister Poots's face, the more she remembered his big hands in her hair, manicured fingernails scraping her scalp, bloody raw lips and acid on her tongue.

_BAM! BAM! BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM!_

The windshield was a network of knotty, veined cracks and fissures. At some point Natasha had climbed onto the car's hood to get a better angle. She was breathing hard from exertion, feeling more alive than she had all week with that one cathartic act of destruction. She slid carefully off the hood, feeling like she ought to be careful, like she had something to protect inside of her, and slung an arm over Skye’s shoulders. 

“You know they’re going to make you talk about it, right?”

“I—yeah, I know,” Skye nodded. “Let’s just get out of here.”

They climbed awkwardly onto Natasha's bicycle, Natasha standing on the pedals so Skye could have the seat with both arms wrapped tight around her middle, making their weary way back to the facility. There was no lethal speed this time. No urgency. She watched for cars at every intersection and used her hand signals with utmost diligence. It was almost pleasant. It felt nice to have someone’s arms so trustingly around her.

She was no longer on duty, which meant she wouldn't be allowed to stay with Skye while she talked to the social worker. Just before they went inside, Natasha grasped Skye by the shoulders and looked at her steadily, trying to figure out what she would have said to herself all those years ago. Turned out it wasn't words Natalia needed. 

She wrapped her arms around Skye in a firm hug. "You're gonna be fine," she whispered, stroking a hand down the girl's long, soft hair. "It'll be scary, but you're gonna be fine. He can't hurt you anymore."

There was only a moment's hesitation before small hands closed around the folds in the back of her shirt. "I know," Skye replied shakily before pulling away. She smiled, stilted, and tipped her head at Natasha. "You're gonna be a good mom. I mean—you're _already_ a good mom. You just don't have the kid yet."

“You…think so?"

"Mhm, yeah."

Natasha took a deep breath and nodded, watching Skye cross the room toward Sam and ask if she could call her social worker. It was out of her hands, now. She could go home, but something told her she wasn't finished yet. There were still ends that needed tying, if only she could find them.

A hand touched her shoulder. "Nat?" asked Steve. She turned to look at him; he was frowning. "Bucky called me. What's going on with you?"

"What'd he tell you?" Natasha asked, suddenly afraid she was going to get some lengthy "Choose Life," spiel. Not that Steve was like that. Or maybe he was. In the 10 years they'd known each other, Natasha never really bothered finding out what he was like. Maybe it was finally time for that to change; he was James’s best friend, after all. The closest thing she was going to have to any kind of in-laws.

"Just that you were upset. He was worried you might..." He shifted and rubbed the back of his neck, but she didn't feed him the rest of the answer. "...hurt yourself. Or something. We both tried calling you. Are you okay?"

She looked over her shoulder. Since Garrett was out for the night, Sam had taken Skye into the big office for more privacy until her social worker came. When Natasha checked her pocket it was to find her phone absent. "I lost my phone," she realized without any real emotion besides the nervousness already skittering behind her eyes. "But I'm—I don't know. If I'm okay or not. I don't know. I have to talk to Clint, is he still here?"

Steve frowned at that, thinking she was deflecting. "No, he went home about an hour ago—but he left something for you, actually, a DVD," he reported, heading for the smaller staff office. "Did you need it for something?"

The disk was only partially visible, hidden under the keyboard. When Natasha pulled it free there was a note attached: _THINK I KNO WUT U WERE LOOKING 4 NOW. I SENT IN A COPY._ Sent it in where? Did it mean what she thought? Did she dare watch, or trust that Clint did the right thing?

"What is it?"

Screw it. She had to know. She had to. She had to know, because maybe Garrett’s voice so unsettled her because she _remembered_ it. Maybe she so detested shaking his hand because it was one that used to restrain her, cover her mouth, tangle in her long red hair, or squeeze breasts taped to her torso with ACE bandage to make her look like a baby at 13. With shaking hands, Natasha inserted the disk into the computer drive, gnawing on her thumbnail through the Band-Aid. "Evidence."

"—of what?"

The screen came to life, the date in the corner almost six months ago. She had to skip through a few days before anything came up. One of their past charges, Ian Quinn who ran away and killed himself, sat in the chair opposite Garrett's desk. They talked for several minutes, then Garrett turned his chair to the side and leaned back. Ian rounded the desk and knelt out of sight.

"Evidence that John Garrett is a pedophile."

Her ears were ringing like the aftermath of a violent explosion. She remembered him, now.

They called the police to confirm that Clint delivered the DVD and they were making an arrest. The dispatcher couldn't disclose specific details, but her tone of voice said all Natasha needed to hear. "Would a past victim coming forward help the case?" she heard herself ask.

Steve, head bowed over the speaker phone, whipped his head around to look at her.

"It may, ma'am. We'll be setting up a tip line in the next few days, or anyone wishing to assist with the case can come to the precinct directly."

"Thank you," said Natasha before ending the call. She lay her heavy, bike-battered head on the desk. Somewhere above her, she heard Steve snap their copy of the DVD in two. "He probably thought the camera was a fake, that we couldn't afford that kind of security. Do you know how long he worked here? _Three years_. How many kids do you think...?"

A big hand settled between her shoulders and she tried not to flinch. "It's not your fault, Natasha," said Steve firmly. "You couldn't have known. People like this, they're _methodical_. They know how to lie and how to hide in plain sight."

_You gave it up to every dick in your face and called it 'trauma.'_

"But he—told me something today," Natasha forced out, raising her head to stare at the black computer screen. "Something only one of the people who abused me would say. They weren't all caught, you know? When word got out, they scattered. Killed the rest of the girls involved. I should have called him out right then and there, but I...didn't think anyone would believe me, without proof. I hated him _so much_. The first moment I saw him I knew he was _wrong,_ just didn't know why."

Steve knew she was fucked up. He had to have known. They lived under that very facility roof for all of two weeks together. She was 14 and the Leshy forced her into an illegal abortion across the city that nearly killed her. When she arrived fresh from the hospital she was a mess of a human being. All she did was lay in bed and cry, lashing out with fingernails bared like claws if anyone—even big-hearted Steve himself—came too close. 14 years old and she had wanted that baby so much, losing it almost killed her. Steve had to have known that, seen it in her somehow, yet he now looked at her like his heart was breaking to hear it spoken out loud.

"He's gone now," Steve said, unknowingly echoing what she told Skye only half an hour prior. "Are you okay?"

She shook her head and lay it on his shoulder, letting him hold her until she had a better idea. 

In no shape to bicycle all the way home, Natasha allowed Steve to get her a cab home. Her legs had been like water when she finally stood from the office chair. The house was dark and quiet, but the porch light was on and the Forrester in the drive, so James had to be home. Natasha entered as quietly as she could and found him sleeping on the couch, underneath the afghan Baba—his _mother_ , now—made for him when he came home from Iraq. She sat on the edge of the coffee table to watch his face. “James?”

One eye cracked open. For a moment she was convinced he would turn his back on her, but then he raised the edge of the blanket with his half-arm and let her in. The couch was small for one, minimalistic for two; Natasha lay half on top of him and he kept his right arm around her tight. They would have to talk about all the things that happened, but for now, it could wait. At least until morning.

“Grant’s going to be okay,” he murmured against her shoulder.

Relief made stars burst in her eyes. Natasha craned her neck to kiss his wrist. “I think I am too.”


	6. Epilogue

Natasha sat on the bus stop bench, a sweater curled around her shoulders as she held her phone to her ear. "I don't think they're home," she reported. A chilly breeze cut right through her and she shivered.

"Did you knock?" asked Clint.

"...no?"

" _Go knock, chickenshit._ ”

"Okay, okay! Jesus."

He hung up on her before she could come up with an excuse not to approach the yellow single-story house behind her. Natasha shifted on the bench to watch the windows for signs of movement. Nothing. The curtains hadn't changed since she was 18. She still remembered storming out, with nothing more than a backpack and all the money she had sweat for in a shitty little diner, glancing back to see Melinda twitching the curtains into place. Watching her go. Probably singing about it.

Why did she come back here?

Every step toward the door felt like a step in tar pit. Every possible scenario, every outcome, played out in her head. There would be yelling. There would be demands and questions. The door wouldn't even open. They would know it was her and they wouldn't answer. But she had to try.

It was the right thing to do.

They had a doorbell now. That was new. Natasha ran her finger around the mount's edges before taking a deep breath and pressing the button. A pleasant melody played, muffled through the door. She took a step back to wait, listening for footsteps or curses or demands that she leave. It was footsteps, in the end, and Phil Coulson opened the door.

Her foster father hadn't changed much since she saw him last. His hairline had receded some more, and he wore glasses, but the real surprise was the smile on his face when he saw her. “Natalia!"

“Hi, Phil.”

“Are you okay?” he asked, smile giving way to a concerned frown. “Come on inside, it must be cold with the wind like this. You want a cup of coffee?”

Natasha hadn’t expected this— _warmth_. Being ushered inside the home where she struggled and clawed her way through adolescence, seeing scuffs on the molding that she was certain she had left behind because she insisted on kicking her boots off every day after school, even just smelling the normal, domestic smells of a home in which she used to sleep. She wondered if her pillow smelled the same now. 

Phil sat her down at the table and reiterated his offer. “Oh, uh—no thanks.” She had to remind herself not to immediately suck down any cup of coffee offered to her, no matter how tired she was.

Shrugging, he sat across from her. “I remember when you came to live with us; we had to almost lock the pot down to keep you away,” he reminisced. “You practically salivated coffee.”

The smile felt like plastic on her face. Yes, she drank a lot of coffee as a teenager. It was the only thing that kept her alert when all she wanted to do was sleep and sleep gave way to nightmares. Still, Natasha hadn’t realized Phil would remember so clearly. “Yeah, I liked my coffee,” she agreed.

“Anyway,” Phil waved his hands complacently. “Sorry, I know you probably aren’t here to dredge all that up again. Are you—everything’s okay, isn’t it? It’s just been so long…”

“I know,” agreed Natasha. She reached into the pocket of her sweater, toying with the corner of the envelope. She’d done it so much over the last week the edges were foxing. “I wanted to give you something. You-you remember my boyfriend, James, don’t you? James Barnes?” As she asked she placed the envelope on the table and slid it toward him.

Careful fingers picked it up, beginning to pull apart the folds. “You two are still together?” asked Phil, delighted. A grin was spreading across his face as he pulled out the small card. “ _Natalia_. Is this what I think it is?”

They couldn’t afford anything extravagant on their wedding invitations, especially now that they were saving up for the baby, too. Plain white card with black lettering, any font other than Papyrus or Comic Sans inviting Phil and Melinda Coulson to her wedding on the 14th of November. It would hopefully be enough time to plan, but not too long that she couldn’t fit into a dress. Natasha nodded.

“Oh, my god, I can’t believe this!” grinned Phil. “I’m so happy for you, Natalia! I hoped you two would make it. But—did you lose the address? You didn’t have to come all the way here.”

Shrugging, she gnawed on the inside of her cheek and stared at the table. “I thought maybe…if you saw it was from me, you wouldn’t open it,” Natasha admitted. “Because I was so terrible to you and Melinda.”

Chair legs scraped on the tile floor and Phil rounded the table to sit beside her, a hand on her shoulder. “Natalia, we dealt with a lot of terrible kids, and you were not one of them,” he said patiently. “You were troubled, definitely, but not terrible. Melinda and I, we understood that you had been through something uniquely traumatic. No foster parent in the area was prepared to take on that challenge, dealing with PTSD and the difficulty in helping you socialize after being alone in that house for so long. We saw it as an opportunity to do some good, and we knew _exactly_ what we were signing up for.”

That…was news to Natasha. She clung to Russian because she hoped that someday she would be saved and returned to her country, but wanted to know what the people on TV were saying, too. She had learned English from TV and reading books, knew how to interact with other people because of programs she watched, listening to Dora and talking back as if they were close friends, secretly having conversations with the mailman when Ivan Petrovitch wasn’t around to hear. Those small glimpses of human interaction were probably the only things that saved her from becoming mute, or a feral child locked in the basement like a rabid dog. And Phil and Melinda knew all of that before taking her in. And they still wanted her.

“Is Melinda home?” Natasha asked quietly around the sudden knot in her throat. 

A voice suddenly spoke up from the door behind her back. “I am.” 

Natasha jumped violently and turned in her chair to look at her foster mother. She, too, looked almost unchanged except for a few more lines around her eyes. Her black hair was tied at the base of her skull and she was wearing either work-out or cleaning clothes. Trepidation filled Natasha’s gut, more like a swarm of bees than butterflies. “H-hi,” she stammered.

"How are you, Natalia?"

When Natasha left that morning, it had been with a distinct plan of anticipated questions and exactly how she would answer them, down to the pauses for breath. She would be polite, friendly, but keep a respectful emotional distance from the exchange. On leaving she would provide her address for an RSVP and leave it to Phil and Melinda's judgment from there. What she hadn't expected or planned was the physical, almost primal reaction to seeing Melinda again after almost six years of silence.

Maybe it could have been blamed on hormones, but Natasha's face crumpled as she crossed the room and flung both arms around her foster mother. "I'm _sorry_ ," she choked. "I'm so sorry for all the nasty, bitchy things I said and did to you. I wanted someone to hurt as much as I was hurting, and I was a monster, and I'm sorry."

Melinda didn't shove her away. She did stiffen in alarm when Natasha barreled toward her, but as soon as she realized there was no malicious intent in the action her body relaxed. She even patted Natasha's hair. "It's okay, Natalia," she said. "I know you didn't mean it. Thank you for coming back."

"You're a good mom, Melinda."

Arms around her tightened. "Thank you," Melinda said. Then she suddenly let go, holding Natasha at arms' length, frowning at the gap between their bodies. “Are you—? No, never mind, sorry.”

For that brief moment, Natasha’s heart had raced. Was it that obvious already? But then Melinda brushed it off and she was safe. Though by the time the wedding rolled around everyone would be able to tell, unless she found a magical dress that could hide that kind of thing. “Well, uh…I should probably go, I don’t want to intrude,” she started, taking a step back and then pausing midway. She looked around the little kitchen, remembering Phil’s well-intended interrogation when James showed up in senior year to take her bowling.

“What’s up?” asked Phil.

“Are you two still taking in foster kids?”

The couple exchanged a glance, seeming to have an entire conversation in only a second. Then Melinda nodded. “Sure. We haven’t in a while, but if a certain case comes up, we like to consider it. You got any ideas?”

Sometimes Natasha forgot that Phil and Melinda secured her place at Short Term Shield, writing letters and making phone calls across the map to assure Nick Fury, who was now back from retirement to cover Garrett’s absence, that she would be a good fit on the line staff. They really, truly, believed in her, and believed in the system, and would do anything to create positive change in the kids they cared for.

She nodded. “I think I might. There’s this girl, she’s been through a lot. She could use parents like you. Good ones.”

Phil and Melinda each insisted on giving her another hug before she left, and their promise to be at the wedding, no matter what. “You, uh—need someone to walk you?” asked Phil with a shaky, uncertain smile.

Oh, shit.

“Actually, I-I don’t think I do,” Natasha admitted, cringing. “See, my…my parents are coming. At least, I _hope_ they are. They’re alive. Gonna be in America in a few weeks, hopefully before the wedding. That isn’t to say that you weren't—aren't—important to me, but…”

“I understand,” nodded Phil immediately, looking like he’d been slapped in the best kind of way. They were happy for her. And they understood her. If she were smart enough to open her eyes she could have had a family a long, long time ago. "That's great news. I'm really glad things are getting better for you, Natalia."

"Yeah, me too," she said, feeling awkward and strained. Part of her wondered if she even deserved any of the good things coming her way soon, after everything. 

Getting outside again was a huge relief. One thing on her long list of shit to do today could be crossed off. Now the insurmountably more difficult task: therapy. 

James was going to pick her up after, trusting her to actually get there on her own and not meet him in the parking lot pretending she had just been inside. The only way she was going to be ready to face her mother and father would be to _attend_ , and keep going no matter how much she didn't want to talk about her feelings. She'd much prefer not to feel at all, but since that wasn't an option, panic management and healthy compartmentalization was apparently the way to go.

Elizabeth Ross was far less intimidating than her father, but she was Natasha's age. Natasha couldn't even figure out her own mind at 24; how could any other 24-year-old dig into her brain and hope to fix anything? She sat through the first sessions writing in her notebook, and when Ross asked to see she found it all in Cyrillic. Most of it was probably jibberish, since Natasha hadn't written in Russian in over a decade, but she remembered her alphabet well enough to fake it.

"Natasha?"

She looked up from her notebook. "Hm?"

Ross tipped her head. "This is our fifth session," she said patiently. "I know it's hard, but we really should talk about some of this stuff. Your parents will be here in three weeks. Should we start there?"

Thinking over her options of escape (none), Natasha caught herself scratching her thumb and swallowed with a jerky nod. "Okay," she muttered.

“What scares you the most about seeing them again?” asked Ross.

“Mm…won’t recognize them. Haven’t been able to remember their faces for years.”

“That makes a lot of sense,” Ross said. “It’s been nearly two decades, and that distance was initiated by a huge trauma. In blocking out the trauma, you lost gaps of your childhood before the abduction, too. If it helps, they’ll probably be surprised by how much _you’ve_ grown up, too, no matter how many times they’re reminded in the next few weeks. They’ve changed as well, gotten older, maybe a little fatter.” She smiled.

“I’m not—” Natasha’s lips peeled back in a grimace and she combed a hand through her hair. “I’m not _six_ anymore.”

“That’s right.”

“I’m not the happy, normal little kid they lost. I’m…sad. I’m really fucked up. Who would want a sad, fucked-up adult daughter?”

Ross sighed and rounded the desk in favor of sitting in the chair beside Natasha. Her voice was so soft and breathy, Natasha hated it. “If you lost the baby you’re carrying tomorrow, it would hurt a lot, wouldn’t it?”

Taken aback by the question, Natasha nodded.

“And when you lost your first baby 10 years ago, that was _devastating_ , right? It shook your whole world apart.”

Again, she nodded, hugging herself.

“The stress and grief consumed you, manifested into that nervous tic, scratching at yourself. Now imagine that you lost your six-year-old daughter, but you never knew whether or not she was really dead. She just _vanished_. No answers or clues for 18 years. You aren’t the only fucked-up one in this equation, Natasha,” Ross assured her, putting a hand on her wrist. “They may not have experienced the exact traumas that you have, but I can bet they’re just as worried you won’t want such sad, fucked-up parents.”

That, oddly, helped. Natasha looked up at the other woman, brain running off at the speed of light to process the information, and thanked her. 

By the time she met James in the parking lot she was both emotionally and physically exhausted, sinking down into his waiting shoulder when he opened his arms.

“I hate taking the bus,” she grumbled into his jacket.

Steady fingers combed through her hair. “I know you do, that’s why I offered to drive,” he reminded her with amusement. “You know I would’ve gone with you, too. And I still _will_ next week, if you want. Just say the word. Now—you wanna get a coffee before the doctor’s?”

“Mhm, yeah.”

“Alright, _lapochka_ , let’s get going before you fall asleep standing all up on me.”

“Yeah, yeah…” 

She sat with her head on his shoulder while he drove, eyes closed, resting as best she could. It was getting harder to sleep at night and harder to stay awake during the day. Every time she stirred in sleep and felt the shape of her growing stomach it was like a direct injection of a nightmare, thinking she was still in the Leshy’s clutches and all her life since then was the dream. There wasn’t much James could do when she panicked like that, other than tell her where she was and who he was, and that she was safe. She could only go back to sleep half-buried underneath him. Doctor Ross was hopeful that when the pregnancy progressed beyond the point when she lost her first, the panic attacks would fade.

The coffee shop wasn’t busy considering the time of day. Natasha had a green tea, wrinkling her nose, while James took pity on her and had a black tea instead of the coffee they both wanted. When they turned as one to find a table in the back James suddenly stiffened. “Grant!” he yelped.

Natasha turned her head so fast she was momentarily blinded by hair, but there he was, sitting alone at a table in the window. He was wearing long sleeves, no surprise, and thick-rimmed glasses. A cappuccino perched uncertainly between his big hands, and a blush engulfed his face at the sight of them. “Hey,” he said, glancing between them. “What’s up?”

“Boring, grown-up stuff,” dismissed James immediately, passing Natasha his tea so he could ruffle Grant’s hair. “How _are_ you, man? You never called, we were starting to wonder if you skipped town.”

Grant smiled awkwardly. “No, nah, uh—I got a room in one of those…halfway houses,” he explained. “Got a job at the aquarium, it pays pretty good. Uh…I’m looking at college in the spring.”

Hope sprung, fierce and intense, at those words from a boy who had only a few weeks ago thought himself so stupid and worthless he didn't even deserve to live. "That's great news, Grant," she said earnestly. “We are all so proud of you." James was quiet beside her, beaming, his eyes fixed on the surface of the table. When Natasha followed his gaze her eyebrows shot up.

There was a second cappuccino on the table across from him, with lipstick on the rim.

"—yeah, so, I don't know what I'm gonna major in yet," Grant said, talking fast as he realized what they were looking at. Embarrassed? Probably. "Maybe something like…I dunno. Just generals to start. Personal training always seemed kind of cool. Otherwise I was thinking, uh…the army, maybe."

That, at least, distracted James momentarily. "Hey, my man, you know, the army's great and all, but you gotta make sure you're joining up for the right reasons, right?" he said slowly. "You shouldn't join up because you feel like you don't got any other choice; you should join up because—well, like, I wanted the discipline, you know? And I wanted to do something good, serve my country, all that good old boy stuff."

"Yeah, yeah, I get that," nodded Grant, the tips of his ears turning red. "It's—you know, after everything…I think it'll be good for me. If I do it."

It was probably the closest Grant would come to outright mentioning his abuse for a very long time. Natasha's heart hurt with wanting to make it right. At least it was over. There was almost an odd connection between them, it seemed. Not the kind that was mentioned or aired out, but shared suffering at the hands of the same man had to mean something in the long run.

James squeezed his shoulder. "Good for you, man," he said. “You got our numbers; call me if you decide to enlist, I'll give you the what's what."

Before more could be said the bathroom door opened with a _bang_ ; Natasha turned and almost gasped out loud. As it were, she had to quickly press her face into James's shoulder to stifle a grin. Skye's eyes narrowed suspiciously as she crossed the small dining room to resume her seat across from Grant. Apparently she had been a little more susceptible to those sweet, carefully rehearsed lines from her birthday than Natasha thought.

"So, this is awkward," the girl announced bluntly. She looked up at Natasha with a glint in her eyes and a slight curl to her mouth to contradict her rude tone. The Coulsons had taken her in the week before and already seemed to have had a good effect. ”Do you mind? We're kind of on a date, here."

Grant turned beet red, but he was smiling down into his coffee.

The shoulder pressed against Natasha's mouth was shaking with suppressed attempts not to laugh. "Well, we'd hate to interrupt," James said, voice stuttering. He hooked an arm around her shoulders and they beat hell out of there. The moment they hit the pavement Natasha raised her head and they gaped at each other, grinning in shocked delight.

" _Oh my god!_ " she laughed, drink-laden hands spread wide. "Remind you of anyone?"

Shaking his head with a bemused grin, James tugged her in closer to kiss her head. "Reminds me of some scared punk kid taking out his dreamboat for the first time," he agreed. "Oh, I love you so much, Natalia. And our little peanut, too."

"Yeah, and we love you back."

His hand slid to her waist, and James leaned in as if to kiss her, smiling sweetly. Then he bit her nose and she shrieked with laughter.

The tea helped, honestly. Even if it wasn't coffee, it revived Natasha a bit with that small dose of caffeine. On the way to the doctor's office she periodically held out James's tea for him to take a slurp from the straw while steering, humming in gratitude every time. The last six weeks had seen not exactly a change between them, only a kind of paradigm shift. They hadn't grown closer because they were already attached at the hip, but they eased into an odd kind of synchronization. Talk was less necessary than touch and touch was less necessary than exchanging looks.

“Are you okay?” he asked as they pulled into the parking lot. 

Natasha was gripping the handle of her door in white knuckles and gnawing on the inside of her cheek, but she nodded anyway. "Mhm. I'm—nervous. But I'm okay." Outside the car she gripped his hand instead. They exchanged a quiet look before stepping through the door to check in with the receptionist. She was going to survive this, and in three weeks her parents would survive it too.

At her first appointment with a different doctor, the woman had made the mistake of referencing Natasha's chart and cheerfully asking, "So, baby number two, huh?" when she sat down. The humiliation was so great Natasha ended the appointment right there and then, begged James to let her switch to another doctor. This woman was the best option they had for their insurance, though, so she persevered for a second try.

"Most parents are pretty nervous for the first ultrasound, and you are joining the game a little late,” Bobbi Morse, friendly and beautiful and sincerely apologetic after her flub last time, said. "It's completely normal. You've taken the initial test, probably experienced a lot of the first symptoms—morning sickness, cravings, some discomfort or spotting—but this is the first real, visual proof that there's something in there."

"Can you tell if it's a girl or a boy yet?" asked James. His palm was sweaty against Natasha's and he was trembling with nervous energy. She felt sluggish and slow in comparison, leaning against his side because her own weight was too heavy to bear right now. 

She really wasn't too scared or nervous about the ultrasound. Mostly she was thinking about how she never got this with her first baby, never got the physical proof beyond a swollen belly until it was being pulled from her against her will. Even then she didn't get to see it, nor did she want to; she lost so much blood she passed out during the procedure, and woke up in the hospital surrounded by police officers.

Morse smiled and nodded. “We _could_ ,” she explained. “But we recommend that most parents wait until they’re closer to the end, so I can mark it down today and check it again next time. If Junior’s feeling shy, I’d hate to tell you to start buying “It’s a Girl!” balloons, you know? So today is just going to be taking a few measurements and listening to the heartbeat, okay? Ready to get going?"

Running her free hand through the fine hairs at the nape of her neck, Natasha nodded. James jerked his chin once in the affirmative, eyes fixed on the wand and plastic tube Morse was pulling out of a case. His hand tightened.

"Little cold, sorry."

A chill ran down her spine to accompany the cold gel on her exposed abdomen. Natasha had to lay back on the table to give Morse room to work. While she gently prodded with the wand, Natasha watched the tech's hands. "You had an engagement ring last time," she observed.

"Hmm?" hummed Morse. "Oh—yeah. If you know any guys looking for a girl who likes dogs more than people, I am _officially_ back on the market." She snorted at her own joke before focusing on the monitor. "Okay, here we go. Check out the screen to my left. Stay with it, hang on, little buddy...and _there_ we are."

James gasped. Natasha pulled her eyes from Morse's hands to look at the screen. The image was gray and grainy, kind of the shape of an avocado. Then Morse shifted the wand and that vague oval suddenly had a head, and a nose, and a waving little hand. A breathless, keening sound slipped from Natasha's throat. James pulled his hand from hers to wrap his arm completely around her. She gripped his sleeve tight.

"You see that flickering there? That's your little bean's heart beating."

"Oh my _god_ ," James moaned into Natasha's hair. He laughed once, and hot tears slipped to her scalp from his chin.

That was her baby. Theirs. It was there and moving and alive and it would be in her arms in five short months. Natasha had to channel all of her energy into focusing on breathing through the emotional panic, or she might have noticed the tears in her own eyes, too.

Morse took the necessary measurements quickly and quietly, smiling as she snuck glances at the couple’s reaction in the corner of her eye. This was pretty clearly her favorite part. “Everything looks to be in order,” she said. “Baby’s right on track for 19 weeks. You should be popping any day now, most first-time moms start really showing around this point—earlier with multiples, obviously. I recommend an ‘Ask, Then Touch,’ t-shirt if you don’t like handsy strangers; I got one for my sister when she was pregnant. I’ll get you the link and a few ultrasound prints for you guys to take home when you leave.”

“Thanks, Bobbi,” James said while Natasha cleaned gooey gel off her stomach with a wad of tissue. “We actually _do_ have this friend, too. Clint. He has a dog.”

“Oh, _really_?” There was a mischievous glint in Bobbi’s eyes.

“Lucky’s a _service_ dog,” Natasha pointed out. “Clint’s deaf. Make sure you ask before petting her or she might walk him into oncoming traffic.”

Morse outright beamed. “Small world. I volunteer as an ASL interpreter on weekends,” she said.

Natasha and James exchanged a look. She’d give Clint Morse’s card and see what happened.

Within just over two weeks of taping up that first ultrasound picture to the staff room fridge, Natasha woke up before dawn to pee and discovered her center of gravity had dramatically shifted without her notice. She looked down at herself while brushing her teeth; she looked like she’d swallowed a small melon in her sleep. It had obviously been a much more gradual shift than she believed, but damn if it didn’t _feel_ sudden. Up until then she just looked like she was putting on some extra weight. 

Natasha yelled wordlessly into the bedroom, mouth full of toothpaste. James jumped out of bed so quickly he almost fell right onto the floor. She turned to face the door and brandished her toothbrush at herself.

“Holy _shit_ ,” he numbly said when he rushed in and got an eyeful. A grin threatened to split his face in two as he approached, hand hovering at her cheek. “Oh my _god_ , babe, check you out!” He laughed, kissed her, then knelt to repeat the process with her belly. Toothpaste smeared her nightshirt, but she didn’t care. Not even one bit.

“The kids are gonna be a riot when they get back from school and see me,” she predicted amusedly.

James looked up at her, then stood, frowning thoughtfully. “Hey, did you ever tell Hill and Weaver?” he asked. “Or are your folks in for a helluva surprise when they get here?”

The smile dropped from her face. “Shit. Do you think there’s enough time now?” It was Monday. Her family was due to start their trip on Wednesday and arrive sometime Thursday. The last time they tried to relay news of the wedding to the FBI agents, it took two days to reach them in Russia through layers of bureaucracy. 

“I guess we’ll have to try,” shrugged James. “At least they’re gonna find out anyway.”

“I guess,” echoed Natasha, sitting on the lip of the bath tub. Because they had nowhere else to go, her hands found the curve of her stomach.

He perched beside her. “You okay?”

_I’m fine_ , fought its way to the backs of her eye-teeth, but Natasha swallowed it down. “What if they’re really traditional people?” she asked.

A hand came up to cover hers and the baby shifted in response, not quite strong enough to feel from the outside, but a sweet little tickle like a flock of butterflies. “They’re going to love you, Nata,” he assured her, kissing her brow, “and they’re going to love the baby,” another kiss, “and if I’m lucky, they might even love me too.”

“They’ll love you,” Natasha insisted. “Everyone loves you.”

“Everyone loves _you_ too, you just don’t notice.”

She didn’t have anything to say to that, so instead Natasha nudged his shoulder with her head and kissed his cheek before getting up. “I’ll call the Bureau; if I wind up on hold for an hour again, I’ll meet you at work,” she called over her shoulder, trudging back into the bedroom.

To some stroke of luck the call went through, with minutes to spare before James _absolutely_ had to leave. She threw on one of his button-down shirts and yoga pants because they were the only clothes that fit at the moment, then dove into the car with a Pop Tart between her teeth.

“Nailed it,” James nodded approvingly, offering out his fist for a bump. She obliged because he wouldn’t pull out of the drive otherwise. “So—quick little prayer circle your folks get the message, but it’s not the end of the world either if they don't, right?”

Natasha leaned across the seats and put her head on his shoulder. “Right.”

Two days. Her entire life was going to change. It already _was_ changing, of course, but this was just as big as the baby or Garrett's arrest, if not more so. This was everything. Where she began. How could two days feel so far away but run past so swiftly? Natasha barely remembered them, aside from Jemma's delighted shriek when she burst through the doors and noticed the changing figure Natasha had been concealing under sweaters for weeks. Now was as good a time as any, considering she was taking a week off to help her family transition into American life.

There wasn't much to do at Shield during the days, now that school was in full swing. They could only clean the rec room or do room checks so many times before it got redundant. More often than not Natasha sat in the office, thinking, checking flight details to ensure there weren't any delays. When she checked the website and saw that her family's flight had departed, she leaned so far back in the office chair it almost toppled over.

Waiting was a blur after that. Nick Fury, who left retirement to be interim director until Garrett could be replaced, sent her home on leave early. Only when Clint gave her a long and lingering hug at the door did it really start to sink in that she was meeting her parents tomorrow.

She didn't sleep. Not in bed, not on the couch. Only when the call came through from Weaver and Hill that they were leaving the airport, and James settled himself beside her on the couch, did she finally lean against him and _crash_. There was nothing more she could do. It was out of her hands. Yesterday they had the foresight to get some groceries, in case the airline food was terrible as the rumors perpetuated. Then Natasha insisted on getting one of those vegetable dip platters too, because they might be vegetarian. They were as prepared as they could possibly be for this.

Gravel crunched in the drive and James gently squeezed her shoulder. "I think they're here, Nata," he whispered when she stirred.

Natasha sat up straight, frantically trying to rub the sleep from her eyes with one hand while smoothing out wrinkles in her shirt with the other. Her heart had gone from sleepily sluggish to pounding at a hundred miles an hour so quickly she was short of breath. The FBI issued black SUV was parked in the drive. Doors were slamming and footsteps walking up the path—more footsteps than seemed appropriate for the four people she expected. Natasha’s ears started to ring almost painfully as something tried clawing its way forward from her lock-box of a memory. 

Only when James stood to answer the doorbell did she realize she clamped both hands over her ears. Sunlight spilling through the open door was blinding. James greeted the agents warmly, then addressed the small group behind them in Russian. «She’s a little nervous. Don’t take it personally.»

Weaver stepped into the living room and held up a digital camera to Natasha. “I thought you might like to have a few pictures of the d—” Her eyes dropped to Natasha’s midriff and widened. So, they hadn’t got the message. Okay. Okay. Breathe. Weaver raised the camera and snapped a picture, then turned to get a picture of the people in the door, too.

Besides Hill and James, there were _four_ people, not two. The ringing in her ears rose to a roar, then went deadly silent. One of the silhouetted figures broke free to approach her, his features coming into stunning clarity. “Natalia?” he asked weakly.

Too young to be her father. He was a boy. A boy who was now a man. A man who was a head taller than her, whose hair was dark auburn, whose eyes were the same green eyes Natasha struggled to meet in the mirror every day. He used to hoist her up onto his skinny shoulders so she could reach low boughs of the tree in their back garden. Her brother, her _twin brother_.

Natasha stood and looked up at him. He had nearly been blond the last time she saw him. There were tears streaming from his eyes and one hand pressed over his mouth as he regarded her. The longer she looked, the more she remembered. She was six, and there was a candy store near their house. When they were good, Mama and Papa allowed her and her brother to walk together and back as long as they held hands. But Natalia wanted to go _before_ school one day, she broke away from her brother and the group and got lost trying to find their school, and that was when Ivan Petrovitch, under the threat of a gun to his family’s heads, told her there was a fire and her family was dead and to come with him. Filled her stomach cavity with drugs and smuggled her into America. 

How would she have felt if he were the one to sneak off that day?

«It wasn’t your fault,» she told her brother. He sobbed once and wrapped his arms around her, careful not to squeeze her middle too tight even when he lifted her clear off the floor. She clung to his shoulders, laughing with eyes stinging. «It wasn’t your fault, Andrej.» He was 13 minutes older than her, used to boast about it all the time, yelling _Eldest_ _knows best!_ every time she tried to start a fight with him.

Over Andrej’s shoulder she watched an older man and woman enter, a teenager hiding behind them. Her father and mother and—she had a sister, she was just a baby when Natasha was taken. How could she have forgotten them? Hill and Weaver never once said her _parents_ , but her _family_. They thought she knew.

"It's like a goddamn movie," James told her, shaking his head.

Only very reluctantly did Andrej release Natasha to meet her mother and father, and even then he hovered close. She felt whatever tether it was that had snapped between them when she crossed the ocean was sticking to her ribs now, inserting itself around her heart. She didn't want to be too far from him, either.

The woman was of a height with Natasha, with dark blonde hair and green eyes swollen from crying. She looked at her lost daughter, at all of her, and started to cry anew. «I never thought I would see you again,» the woman admitted. «Do you remember us?»

«A little,» Natasha nodded. It was the same as with Andrej; the longer she looked the more familiar they became. The man was tall and his hair red, eyes blue. The girl behind them wasn't familiar only because she had been an infant when Natasha was six. 18 now, or very nearly. She was pretty, taller than Natasha, the spit of her mother. «I'm—happy. That you're here. Even if I'm not so good at showing it, yet. I don't like to cry.»

James was hovering near the door, smiling weakly as he watched the exchange. Natasha tipped her head to draw him closer, wrapping an arm around his waist. «It's very nice to meet you all,» he said, his hand smoothing a firm line down her back. «We have food if you’re hungry, and you’re all welcome to stay as long as you want. Our home is your home also.»

He pressed a kiss to her head and led the way into the kitchen. They had to try and ease into things. Even simple touches could be overwhelming. Hugging her brother was something she didn't know she was missing for 18 years until it happened, but she wasn't certain she could handle being held by the mother she had so missed. 

"Hey," Weaver said, approaching while everyone filtered into the tiny kitchen. "You know what this means?"

Natasha frowned. "Should I?"

"The Crimes Against Children Division's main goal in an abduction case is to reunite abductees with their families," the agent explained. "Now that our work is done in _that_ regard, your case is going to be moved to the Sex Crimes Division, where they'll spend the next few months—or years—trying to track down the remaining offenders. Chances are, if they weren't arrested they're still offending today." 

She offered Natasha a sympathetic smile, knowing that a shiver was running down her spine at the thought. "These offenders have a specific type, which includes age. The Behavioral Analysis Unit might even get involved at some point, but they're usually reserved for singular offenders. Either way, Agent Hill and I won't be your case workers anymore. You think you'll be okay without us sniffing around?"

Laughter rang from the kitchen into the front room, skittish and tense but genuine. Already James was working his magic and charming them. They were going to love him.

"Nata, you gotta come listen to this, Magda’s a riot!" James called to her unseen.

Turning her head away from the sounds, Natasha addressed Weaver with a smile. "Yeah, I’ll be okay," she nodded, and stepped into the kitchen to join her family.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's it! Now go listen to Brushbloom Glow by The Tree Circle to complete the experience. Thanks for reading! I may write a prequel of the mall as teenagers from James's PoV. Not sure yet. If you're into it you should leave a comment and let me know :)


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